Peak Oil Task Force Report - City of Bloomington - State of Indiana

About the Activity Nodes Project
In a post‐peak world, it will be important for people to live close to services critical to
everyday life. In an effort to understand just how close or far residents currently live from
key services, the Task Force mapped those services and compared the location of key
services (areas of “activity nodes”) against a map of population density.
The following Activity Nodes map tracks the location of nine key services and the density of
these services within a 300‐foot by 300‐foot block: grocery stores, schools, pharmacies,
post offices, public libraries, restaurants, hardware stores, department stores and farmers’
markets. The areas of the city with the highest concentration of these services (seven or
more) are noted in bright pink; those with five to six locations are marked in red; those
with four and three destinations are marked in dark and light orange respectively while
those with one or two locations are indicated by yellow.
While the current picture of activity nodes points to three distinct nodes, an ideal
configuration would place people closer to the nodes or the nodes closer to the people. Map
B outlines areas of population density. When we lay the services map on top of the
population map to examine the ways they align, it is clear that daily necessities cluster
around major thoroughfares and do not necessarily track population density (Map C).
The idea of activity nodes is anticipated in the City’s 2002 Growth Policies Plan (GPP). The
GPP outlines the idea of a “Neighborhood Activity Center” (NAC). A NAC is a “mixed
commercial node that serves as the central focus of each neighborhood” that should be
easily accessible by pedestrians and minimize auto traffic while providing “small‐scale
retail and business services within the context of neighborhoods” 134 However, the GPP
identified just a handful of NACs, only a few of which map onto the critical nodes identified
by the Task Force. 135 For the most part, the NACs identified by the GPP do not align with
critical services, nor are they located in areas of significant population density.
134 GPP, 33.
135 Ibid.
Report of the Bloomington Peak Oil Task Force
96