Mayor Jim Donchess speaking at the Sustainability Fair

Recently we were at the Nashua Sustainability Fair at the Nashua Public Library to celebrate Earth Day. The walkable cities bring a lot of different benefits to cities, everything from a strong tax base to more pleasant places for folks to enjoy. But one thing in Nashua Strong Towns we don’t talk about as much is that creating walkable cities is a huge benefit to the environment.

By building denser housing, increasing the number of storefronts available by foot traffic, and creating areas where folks can get around using micromobility solutions (bikes, scooters, rollerblades, etc.) we can drastically decrease our carbon footprint.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, 29% of all of the carbon emissions released by the United States comes from transportation, while an additional 30% come from commercial and residential areas (notably, heating, cooling, and ventilation of these areas)

As a country that is hugely dependent on cars for travel, a huge portion of the emissions created by transportation come from driving, those numbers exacerbated by sprawl. Quoted from the EPA:

In terms of the overall trend, from 1990 to 2021, total transportation emissions have increased due, in large part, to increased demand for travel. The number of vehicle miles traveled (VMT) by light-duty motor vehicles (passenger cars and light-duty trucks) increased by 45% from 1990 to 2021, as a result of a confluence of factors including population growth, economic growth, urban sprawl, and periods of low fuel prices.

Ensuring we can increase density so we can make the move to more public transportation and away from private motor vehicles ensures our carbon emissions drop drastically.

Likewise, heating and cooling single family houses is extremely inefficient, as none of the walls are attached to anything else. When it comes down to heating and cooling, if transitioned from single family units to multifamily units, each individual person’s carbon footprint could be decreased to almost 25% of what it is from a conventional suburban development.

With all this in mind, at Nashua Strong Towns – we discussed how zoning makes creating mixed use, walkable developments difficult. We are currently working with the planning department to get a proper number, but as it is, Nashua is likely zoned upwards of 80% as single family residential (in areas where housing is currently allowed).

Full res map available here: https://www.nashuanh.gov/295/Planning-Department

Zoning is currently one of the largest barriers to creating beautiful, sustainable, and walkable developments in the city. Zoning however is super dry, so we set out to inform the town of what zoning is, and why they might want to change the zoning of the city.

Making zoning interesting

At the Sustainability Fair, our Conversation Leader did their best to try and make it easy to understand the current land use codes, and how they affect the current residents.

Lured over with free cookie cubes in exchange a quick trivia question, we included photos of some of the most iconic places in Nashua. Of these places, included were: