Best Practice Action Detail

Best Practice Action 8.4

GreenStep City Best Practices: Land Use

Mixed Uses No. 8

Develop efficient land patterns that generate community health and wealth.

Best Practice Action 4

Report that a (re)development meets a city/community-determined minimum point threshold under the Equitable Development Scorecard or LEED-ND (Neighborhood Development).

Implementation Tools
Star-level Examples

LEED-ND has been used in a Minnesota development and a planning project: (1) Excelsior & Grand (St. Louis Park); (2) St. Paul Ford Motor plant redevelopment site scenarios.
See resources for the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design for Neighborhood Development certification program. Three other more challenging fee-based certification systems are The Living Community Challenge and the EcoDistricts Protocol and the RELi resilience standard. A less-challenging, easier to use-and measure framework is 7 Rules for Creating 15-Minute Neighborhoods from the MN organization Strong Towns.
The Equitable Development Scorecard (Harrison Neighborhood Association & others: 2015) allows development plans/projects and policies to be evaluated along 5 dimensions (community engagement, and land use, economic development, housing, and transportation practices) to ensure that everyone regardless of race, economic status, ability or the neighborhood in which they live has access to essential ingredients for environmental, economic, social, and cultural well-being including: living wage jobs, entrepreneurial opportunities, viable housing choices, public transportation, good schools, strong social networks, safe and walkable streets, services parks, and access to healthy food. See also the transportation edition (Cycles for Change: 2018) of the Scorecard for ensuring streets and public spaces are safe and accessible for people who bike, walk, roll and use public transit.

	Report what percentage of your city is covered by 15-minute neighborhoods; report credits achieved by the development under the LEED-ND program (ideally including housing for different incomes and different stages of life); use a city staff or community process to predetermine high, medium and low score ranges on the Equitable Development Scorecard and report the score achieved by the development.
	Certify the new development under the LEED-ND program.
	Certify the development under the Living Community Challenge, EcoDistricts Protocol or RELi resilience standard.

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Best Practice Action 8.4

Greenstep Advisor