NPD P3- Connected and Open Community

Hi Juan,

I'm glad to hear of your interest in the rating system. There are ways that a project with gates may still pass the prerequisite, but we don't offer a path specifically for international projects based on cultural grounds. So it is possible that your project wouldn't be able to certify. We offer some guidance on this in the International Project FAQ (found here: http://www.usgbc.org/ShowFile.aspx?DocumentID=7586 )

Here's the guidance from the FAQ:
"To fully understand how gates are treated in LEED-ND, review NPD prerequisite 3: Connected and Open Community.
The intent of this prerequisite is to encourage high levels of internal connectivity (intersections and paths for all modes
of travel) as well as connections to the surrounding community. Gates prohibit these connections, but the rating system
does allow them for education and health care campuses and military bases where gates are used for security purposes.
Additionally, if other gates are present, any intersections within those gated areas cannot be counted towards the
project’s connectivity score (the number of intersections per square mile). Therefore, it is still possible that a project
that includes a gated community within its boundaries might be able to comply with this prerequisite. In addition, up to
2% of the area within the project boundary can be excluded from the LEED-ND project; as a result, this enclave would
not be counted towards any credit. A project that is entirely enclosed by a gate would not be able to comply with this
prerequisite as none of the intersections within the gates would count toward the connectivity score."

Best,
Meghan

For int'l projects, we have been able to integrate gated enclaves in ways that would still allow us to make the intersection requirements. Gated enclaves can often be restricted to tracts with single family homes (row-houses, town-houses, villas) which cannot benefit from building security. As long as these areas are kept small, and the preponderance of development is planned with other typologies (such as apartment buildings), the intersection requirement under NPDp3 doesn't have to prevent prerequisite compliance.

Note that this will no longer hold under the current draft of LEED ND 2012, however, where a superseding total % area cap on gated tracts has been proposed. The proposed additional requirement will disqualify many international projects, especially in cities where significant and real security issues exist, where single family homes, townhomes and rowhouses cannot afford private unit-level manned security.

Personally, I disagree with this added complexity. If the object is connectedness and openess, then, in my opinion, the intersection test (which is a perfectly fair prerequisite) should be sufficient. The new superseding requirement seems to me to be double-dipping. If I can pass the intersections prerequisite for an open and accessible community, then it seems to me that I would have met the intent of the prerequisite. A catch-all and arbitrary 10% cap on top of it would hardly change the neighborhood quality or otherweise increase its sustainability, would it?

My view is: if the LEED concern is that there are adequate publicly accessible street and ped connections and open and accessible blocks are small enough, the current LEED 2009 prerequisite should be enough. Within it's requirements, I can still make gated enclaves work. I'll just create small mews-like gated enclaves within blocks and make those enclaves small so as not to disrupt the amount of connectedness outside of those blocks. I'd wrap other building typologies, such as condominiums and other strata-titled building types around the edges of those blocks, so as to assure enough permeability to the (outside of the gate) street edge. I can even put some street-front retail there. As those buildings would be larger - with more dues-paying units, they could afford building-level security systems, and thus do not have to sit behind a gate. The neighborhood environment created would be no less pleasant and/or accessible.

Many neighborhoods developed in fast-growing countries like Brazil, Indonesia, South Africa, etc, in cities with high crime rates, are done with combinations of single family (often attached single family) and multi-unit residential buildings. Effectively, the proposed 2012 change in NPDp3 will bias development toward multi-unit buildings and away from equivalently dense town-house/row-house configurations, in those locations. In several ways, the new NPDp3 requirement 10% cap requirement is anti-green building, since the row/ and town-house typologies can be among the best performing from an energy perspective. If I wanted certification, I would have to choose to go with strata-titled apartment buildings - at equivalent density. This cannot possibly be the USGBC's intention, but this is exactly what I will have to recommend to clients in order to circumvent the (essentially pointless) new requirement.

Hopefully there will be another opportunity to comment on this in the coming months, now that the LEED 2012 transition has been postponed. I'd be interested in understanding USGBC's perspective on this issue, to better comprehend why the intersection prerequisite is now being considered insufficient and why that requirement is effectively being replaced with the superseding, absolute cap.