Part 1: Introduction; Background; Suburban sprawl patterns; the four major components; public realm/private realm

Part 2: Zoning/Codes; Single Use vs. Mixed Use Planning; Traffic and congestion issues; Quality of Life issues; Scale and relation to physical compatibility vs. functional compatibility

9 part New Urbanism case study lecture

Andres Duany, Architect and Urban Theorist.

There is a scene early in the 2006 mockumentary Radiant City that provides the key explanation to the morphology of suburban sprawl. Our favorite writer James Howard Kunstler sits on a bench in a community bike trail that is enclosed in two rows of chain link fence in order to, I presume, secure it from the high-capacity arterial road that runs alongside it. The experience is vaguely what it must have been like to patrol the Berlin Wall, had it been encircled by an expressway. “Some clown in an office somewhere thought this would be a good idea, that’s why it’s here,” says Kunstler. “Not because anybody really tested whether or not it would feel good to be here.”

That’s all the film has to say about why sprawl is, and in fact there is nothing more to be said. The characteristic of a sprawl city is the absence of any intelligence in design. The rest of the movie is about how and why families cope with life in this intelligence-less environment. It does that with a narrative that is refreshingly honest and modern, despite not depicting a real family. It is shot on location in the outskirts of Calgary, a city that, thanks to a highly competent planning authority and an economic boom that has attracted large numbers of new citizens, has over the last decade built new developments at supernaturally huge scale.

The new neighborhoods are for the most part built of nice buildings, nothing to write UNESCO about but approaching genuine Victorian. Contrary to the suburban cliché, houses are built to a density that is comparable to city centers, which means there is adequate public transportation available. And in compliance with new planning regulations, developers have provided big clusters of condominium buildings to serve as “affordable housing”. With this setting, the directors have avoided the social exclusion issues that sometimes get bundled up with criticisms of the suburbs. In fact here the families explain that they left the center because it had become unaffordable for either their growing family or without shame-bearing subsidization (never mind affordable housing regulation being indirect subsidization), meaning the exclusion narrative is turned backwards. These people have been pushed out of the city.

What is there left to complain about then? Not very much, still there is a general awareness that there must be something missing, yet none of the characters can pinpoint it. They deal with boredom as best they can, the local teenagers finding, as all boys have ever done, that a muddy pit is all that’s needed for endless fun. Today’s boys turn this free space into a paintball game they call “escape to Mexico”, but it’s really just cowboys and indians for the postmodern age. Their fun is interrupted by a private security patrolmen hired by the builders to patrol the private streets, but these guards turn out to be benign bordering on benevolent. Incessant chauffeuring becomes the cause of a mini-crisis as poor husband Evan is forbidden from working on his car by his emasculating witch of a wife Anne, worried that such activities will send the car to the mechanic and leave her with the entire burden of chauffeuring the family on their maddening activities schedule.

If there is one recurring theme, it is that at every point the creative control of the environment has been taken away from individuals. The kids cannot play on empty lots, the father cannot risk working on his car, the space for any meaningful personal culture has been slashed to nearly nothing. The exception to this is Anne who gets to enjoy total control of the house itself, which she obviously takes great pleasure in when deciding how each room will be laid out.  At every point in the film where someone defends the choice of life in the suburbs it is either Anne or a female real estate agent involved.

As a form of passive-aggressive revenge, Evan signs up to be in a musical about suburban life where he and his male friends sing showtunes while dancing around with lawnmowers. (Lawnmowers having no utility in the postage-stamp sized lawns of the new suburbs, they are remembered in dance.) It is telling that Evan found out about the show by looking around the Internet. It is on the Internet that community and culture has exploded in the last years as the physical world has become more and more inaccessible. The Web 2.0 phenomenon has given the power to everyone to create something and express themselves, for better or worse. The Web has become a new city, and its different processes new forms of urbanism.

Sorely missing from the film, which features the opinions of architects, professors of philosophy and other intellectuals, are the opinions of the planners, politicians and developers who make this product. The planning system is as remote to the narrative as it is to people’s lives. While the complaint of the loss of citizenship implied by mass motorization is rehashed by an intellectual, what about the loss of citizenship implied by the planning process itself? All decisions about the shape of their environment has been taken long in the past, in the colorful words of Mr. Kunstler, by some clown in an office somewhere. The only thing left for citizens to do is to enjoy or hate their environment. They have been dispossessed of any power to shape it. Somewhere democracy of place was substituted for bureaucracy, and the best the citizens have been offered since is the chance to collectively shackle the bureaucrats through public design charrettes. The citizens have no more rights to create their city than citizens of Stalin’s Moscow did. That is the only aspect sprawl still has in common with Le Corbusier’s original vision for the Radiant City.

Yet the film does not reach this conclusion. If there is any conclusion, it is that everyone is helpless in the face of this seemingly unstoppable monster. As Joseph Heath says at the beginning, the critique of suburbia is the same it was two generations ago, everyone who lives in suburbia knows backwards and forwards the critique of suburbia, yet they still live there. Andrès Duany appears proposing that what sprawl needs is a grid and denser housing, yet the setting already has a grid and obviously the last thing it needs is even more houses.

A young woman states at the end, out of character, that she sees kids playing alone in suburbia and remembers her youth building giant forts with everybody in the neighborhood. I remember my happiest time growing up at the edge of the suburbs was building a treehouse on some leftover tree with the neighborhood kids. The treehouse was demolished because it was unsafe and then the tree cut down to build another house. I never saw any of those kids again.

That’s all community is, people making things together. That’s what creates the spiritual aspect of a place. Once we lose the freedom to do that, we can’t be citizens. We are just consumers of cities. Radiant City, by looking at life in suburban sprawl in its purest, best realized form, defines the right problem but fails to ask the right question. Perhaps citizenship is so far in the past that we can’t even remember to ask the question.

Radiant City

A film by Gary Burns and Jim Brown

Order it from Amazon.com.

Good article in the Daily Reflector today about a presentation about adaptive re-use given by Don Edwards to the Chamber’s Young Professional’s group.  Check it out here.

Don Edwards has always been a big advocate for downtown uptown. I’m glad he’s there to help educate the citizens and leaders of Greenville about downtown redevelopment. I understand he’s pretty well read in terms of the development theorists such as Jane Jacobs, and Andres Duany, both of which I highly recommend. I think he gets it.  If Greenville wants to become a vibrant thriving community we have to focus on re-developing our downtown by increasing population density, preserving existing historic structures and encouraging mixed-use infill projects.

Downtown development will be a big topic on this blog.  I think it will also be an important campaign issue in the upcoming local elections. I’ll try to cover the topic and provide my views and opinions and inform anyone who regularly reads this blog.  Trying to get in the swing of regular posting, will try to have something new as often as possible. We’ll see how it goes.

I’m in Florida on vacation for the week, so posting may be light. But I’d be remiss if I didn’t share something that happened to me today.

Today, we headed down 30-A to visit Seaside, the little town made famous by The Truman Show. Seaside was one of the first planned ”smart growth” developments in the country and the brainchild of planner Andres Duany, a man who is often considered the most influential person in American land use planning.

Duany and his wife, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, are the founders of the Congress for New Urbanism and are both outspoken proponents of reinvisioning the way in which America plans communities. Needless to say, I am a big fan of his work and his books, particularly Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream.

I’ve been going to Seaside for well over a decade, and nowadays, I usually make the drive for one reason: To buy my summer reading from Sundog Books, one of the few remaining truly independent bookstores in the country.

So while walking up the steps to Sundog this afternoon, I noticed a film crew interviewing a man who looked exactly like Andres Duany. I asked around, and one of the guys at Sundog confirmed that it was, in fact, Duany; he’s in town for a big digital media festival in nearby Alys Beach (also planned by his firm).

Later on, I happened to wander directly into one of the shoots and had the opportunity to hear Mr. Duany speak about the differences between compact density and sprawl “density.”  

When they wrapped up the shoot, I called out to Mr. Duany to tell him that I was a big fan, and he walked up to where I was sitting and sat down to chat.

The film crew obviously saw an opportunity and decided to film our entire conversation. We spoke briefly about the smart growth efforts currently being undertaken in Alexandria and the work that his firm is doing throughout the Great State (which he says is one of his favorite places in the world to work).

He left me with some sage advice, a few book recommendations, and, of course, a small role in whatever the heck they were filming.

If you haven’t read Suburban Nation, buy it now.

Incidentally, I have written about Mr. Duany before on this blog, way back in 2006.

PS: Mr. Duany offered nothing but praise for the work being done by my friends at C-PEX (the Center for Planning Excellence) as well as the ongoing revitalization efforts underway in Downtown Baton Rouge.

Mike Snyder brings us this report on Houston’s babysteps toward TOD.  Houston is well known for being America’s largest city without a zoning code, but their development patterns wouldn’t reflect it at all.  According to this article, they require 25 foot setbacks and only 4-foot sidwalks, which is actually against the Americans with Disabilities Act, which requires five feet, the space needed for two wheelchairs to pass each other or for one wheelchair to turn around.  Well, in their effort to encourage TOD, they have increased that standard to five feet, and six feet along transit corridors.  This is for sure an improvement, but if you look at the transect, a 6-foot sidewalk is for principally residential areas, not a large city.  Houston’s sidewalks should be no narrower than 12 feet, to allow for street trees, street furniture, and window shopping.  They also neglected to change their parking requirements, because they felt that even if they changed them, the retailers would demand more parking.  That’s why minimum parking is a problem, and some, such as Andres Duany, encourage maximum parking standards.  Houston’s TOD probably won’t work, because by allowing loads of parking, you still encourage people to drive instead of taking the train.  I hope this isn’t the case and that TOD’s can change Houston, but I don’t have high expectations.

Rachel Parker Dickinson brings us this report on the goings-on of Hendrix College.  The great Andres Duany is heading up a project there known as The Village at Hendrix, which will include single-family homes with porches and rear-loading garages, townhouses, live/work units, and mixed-use facilities.  Duany said that he is really glad that he can work on this project in a college town because “The college town is what gives this place culture.  It also mixes up the ages.  Because of the constant renewal (by the college), this will be one of the few communities that’s continually mixed in age.  If I really had to live in one of my own towns this is a very good candidate.  The college is the greatest amenity the town has, and the town is the greatest amenity the college has.  You’ll be able to lead your life here without feeling compelled to leave all the time.”  I have written previously about other colleges (Sacramento State and the University of North Carolina) and their towns supporting New Urbanism.  I just wish my college town would.  I think that it’s funny that Duany specifically mentioned “feeling competted to leave all the time,” which is a frequent sentiment from BYU students.  As the latest round of contention in the Joaquin Neighborhood shows, Provo cares very little for the needs if its 35,000 students.  We have a lot to learn from Hendrix.

Cities are my favourite places to live. Small towns are nice to visit but I wouldn’t want to live there.

As a boy, I loved Detroit. If my friends and I wanted to visit an amusement park, we didn’t have to wait for the fall fair like the kids in small towns. We’d simply visit Edgewater Park in Detroit, and it was cheap. As the radio jingle said, pay one price and ride all day. What a deal! And, you didn’t need a car to get there. We took buses.

As I got older, I discovered Toronto. Another great city. We’d drive to a  friend’s in the westend, leave the car, and take the subway downtown. We’d shop all day, hitting Eaton’s, Sam the Record Man’s, Honest Ed’s and Robert Simpson’s. For dinner we’d head to Chinatown near city hall or take a quick subway ride to Greektown on Danforth.

At night, we went to the Hawk’s Nest, where we had memberships. This was the teen night club owned by Ronnie Hawkins, the famous transplanted Arkansas hillbilly rocker. When Hawkins played the Victoria Park bandshell in London, Ontario, on New Year’s Eve some years ago, it brought back fine memories.

Ljubljana-capital of Slovenia

As an adult I have come to love New York, Chicago, SanFrancisco, Paris, Rome and even smaller places like Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, and Tunis the capital of Tunisia. I have a hole in my heart left by the collapse of that once wonderful city Detroit.

When I read about the New Urbanism movement, I confess it left me cold. Who, in their right mind, wants to recreate small town living?

Well Sunday I visited Oak Park – a new urbanism community – on the northern edge of Oakville, Ontario. I have something to report: who wants to recreate small town living? Answer: not the new urbanists. Sadly, they are not recreating big city living either. It’s welcome to suburbia tight.

I had read a great deal about Oak Park, most of it good. It was a wonderful example of new urbanism in practice, or so I was told. I read in the Toronto papers how the famous Andres Duany even had a hand in the project.

I thought I would find a beautiful place to live, a suburban development with a Walt-Disney-Recalls-Small-Towns feel. I thought it would be hard to find fault with it, other than to grumble that hundreds of acres of valuable farmland were now buried under roadways, sidewalks and housing. I look to New York, Paris or Ljubljana for my urban inspiration and not to Essex or Exeter.

A garage facing the street?

I was wrong. My first clue that all was not right was the sight of a garage door at the end of what appeared to be a street. This should not be, I thought, in a new urbanism development all garages are banished to laneways behind the homes.

I walked up for a look. The road bent sharply right, becoming an alley lined with garage doors.

An Oak Park alley viewed from a townhouse porch.

I stood on one of the townhouse porches and took the above photo. This view was such a surprise. I intensely dislike the look of a street lined with garage-forward houses. I thought the new urbanists and I were on the same page when it came to this. Obviously not. This view simply should not exist – not from a front door or a back door.

Alleys are not liked by all.

My boyhood home in Windsor, Ontario, had an alley. Generally, we kept out of the alleys. Today, those alleys gone. The city found them expensive, dirty and dangerous. Whether or not Oak Park will eventually feel this way, time will tell.

I would like to get back to Oak Park after a major snowfall. How do they plow these narrow alleys? Where do they push the snow? They look like land gobblers and money munchers to me.

To be fair, many of the homes do look good when viewed from the front.

Semi-detached and single family units, most with porches, are intermixed.

Peeling paint on a high maintenance porch.

On the other hand, there’s lots of vinyl siding, lots of crude, factory-painted aluminum sheets, and lots of silly, fake shutters – a genuine suburban cliche. My suburban home in London, Ont., has them. My next-door-neighbour wisely removed his, improving  the look of his home immediately.

Where do the residents of this ideal community walk to shop? They don’t. Walk that is. They drive, and they drive to the stores familiar to all suburbanites – Walmart, Loblaws Superstore, and big box stores surrounded by acres of  blacktop.

This mall won't kill a downtown. Oak Park doesn't have one.

When it comes to shopping I’m a mallrat. I want my developer to put out some money for a sunlight-bright, cool in the summer, warm in the winter modern mall. I stopped trudging through slushy, salt-laden snow to hike from store to store back in the ’60s.

Welcome to your new urbanism Walmart.

I do like to walk and when I do it’s to my small, neighbourhood library or to one of the family-owned restaurants in my neighbourhood. Sorry Keg, the restaurant of choice in Oak Park, but I don’t eat at big chain eateries. My subdivision offers a number of nice, inexpensive, family-owned restaurants. Why is no one writing articles about my neighbourhood?

Oak Park? Well, to quote one resident who said, when asked about the new urbanist approach to dense housing, “It sucks.”

And, on second thought, maybe someone should tell Andre about Exeter. It’s cool.

For a real small town experience, try a real small town like Exeter, Ontario.

I just read Stuart Elliot’s April 6 Advertising column in the New York Times, which told me nostalgia is in. Or at least that Madison Avenue has latched onto it as a way to soothe our worries and make us all feel more comfortable in this, our current turbulent time. (And then buy stuff.) Old advertising characters and slogans, and even retro packaging, are being trotted out. It would seem that these ads are intended to evoke nostalgia for past advertising and then, by extension, the times in which it was produced.

According to the piece, though we are a seriously nostalgic people (and nostalgic for periods marked as decades, approximately 20 years after they happen), the last time ad execs paid much attention to this was in the uncertain 70s, when the public was bombarded with images of a supposedly happier time, or at least a time that hearkened back to plenty of people’s childhoods, the 50s.

I sometimes think I’m genetically nostalgic. Though cheery, I’ve always entertained a melancholic streak, an interest in memory, in looking back. An awareness of the fleeting, even as it’s occurring (which can also lead to terrific appreciation.) An inner longing for something that I can only somewhat identify as the past. In college, I majored in history. 30s design speaks volumes to me, and always has. So does 40s music, 50s fashion, and, of course, anything from the 60s on, which is layered with my own childhood and other memories.

The word “nostalgia” means “the pain connected with returning home”. The “algos” part comes from Greek, literally meaning pain and grief. Etymologically, then, the word contains the notion of fleetingness, of time actually passing, of the knowledge, conscious or not, that one can’t go home again. Memories may be sweet to look at, but painful to try to recapture, and grief-inducing when our own mortality is brought to bear. Thornton Wilder knew this when he wrote “Our Town”. So did Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick, who even set “Fiddler on the Roof”’s bittersweet “Sunrise, Sunset” during a wedding.

And so did the writers of TV’s “Mad Men”, to bring Madison Avenue back for a moment. The show itself is, of course, a wonderful paean to nostalgia – it delightfully bundles the last of swing-a-ding-ding macho swagger and possibility with great late 50s and early 60s style (The swing coats! Men still wore hats!), not to mention a dose of the new hip ad biz, which was just coming on. In Season One’s closer, Creative Director Don Draper alights on a successful pitch for the Carousel slide projector by homing in on the notion of nostalgia to sell a modern product designed to display simple pleasures to people during a tumultuous time. Sound familiar?

(The episode is also cleverly titled, “The Wheel”, as the Carousel mimics the turning of time.)

Lots of us traffic in nostalgia. And the idea of a simpler time is a big part of that. When I make jam with my daughter, or crafts by hand, I think of grandparents, of those who have done similar before me, without all the modern conveniences. We know we’re fast-paced – often disconnectedly and distractedly so – and many of us share the yearning to slow down and enjoy our families, our friends, ourselves, our homes, and simple pleasures. Witness the complete and mainstream resurgence of the ancient practice of yoga, which, only 20 years ago or so, was practiced by a relatively rare few. Witness the features in parenting magazines that tell us how to “Have a Family Game Night”. Or Conn and Hal Iggulden’s hugely popular “Dangerous Book for Boys,” which capitalizes on people’s desire to recapture lost arts and a simpler time, with instructions on how to read cloud formations and skim stones.

Walt Disney knew a thing or two about nostalgia. He designed Disneyland’s Main Street to hearken back a half-century, to a simpler turn-of-the-century period of telephone party lines, sarsaparilla candy in jars, gas streetlamps, and a watch-repair man on the corner. Indeed, to evoke his own nostalgia-tinged memories of growing up in Marceline, Missouri. He even created Main Street using a 90% scale, to further induce a kind of pleasure and calm, a subconscious feeling that one is visiting a simpler place.

Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, architects and founders of New Urbanism, have built a number of planned communities based on the ideas of tradition and nostalgia. Though many have a beef with their aesthetics, and with the ultimately sterile feel of their developments, it is hard not to admire their stated goal of combating suburban sprawl and desolate “nowheresvilles” with sidewalks and front porches and corner stores, the better for communing and even meeting (gasp!) one’s neighbors. Even they, in their book “Suburban Nation”, say they’d rather live in a mature neighborhood than in a new development, but that a mix of affordability and taste creates a desire for their planned communities. At least they are being planned with some community life in mind.

I will have a lot more to say about nostalgia in all its facets. Appreciations for what is lost, methods for enjoying the appealingly retro now. Memory, time, light, childhood, feelings, music, design, architecture, film, food, farms, cities, resorts, travel, nature, celebrations, politics, commerce – nostalgia touches everything. It’s at once universal and highly personal. As someone might still say, somewhere on Madison Avenue, Stay tuned.

Photos by Susan Sachs Lipman

The National Post reports about the failures of Canada’s most famous New Urbanist experience, Cornell in the Toronto Suburbs.

More than 10 years ago, a charismatic Cuban American architect embarked on a bold plan to transform a plot of Ontario farmland into a bustling urban utopia, a place where dwellers would swap cars for walking shoes and enjoy a sense of urbanity in what would have otherwise been just another suburb. Or so that was Andres Duany’s plan.

Instead, cars today zip up and down the narrow avenues and not a pedestrian, charming coffee shop, nor restaurant is in sight. It is a Tuesday afternoon, and two beauty salons are inexplicably closed for the day, a real estate office is locked with snow piled high outside its door, not a single child is playing in Mews Park, and the convenience store sees only a trickling of residents. Here and there a York Regional Transit bus rolls along, but public transportation to, from  and within Cornell is far from comprehensive.

“The mindset was that people wanted a village feel, but what emerged was a sort of pseudo-village,” said Michael Spaziani, a Toronto architect who a decade ago helped create Cornell’s open-space master plan, adding that Cornell is so far nothing more than a “cuter form of sprawl.”

John Evans, a father of three who moved to the Markham community about 10 years ago, said he was lured here by the promise of an imaginative urban development, only to today find his expectations not entirely met.

“I was drawn here by the novelty of the idea. But the goal of a walkable community with shops and a retail centre has not been achieved. We have to drive everywhere,” Mr. Evans said, adding that none of his children walk to school.

Renee Torrington, former president of the Cornell Rate Payers Association who moved here in 1998, said she too was excited by the prospect of living in a walkable community, where the revving of engines would be the exception and not the daily norm. But Ms. Torrington buckles into her car nearly every day, whether it be to drive to work in Mississauga, haul groceries from Loblaws, catch a flick, or pick up a bag of dog food from the pet store.

The solution proposed is to bring back Andres Duany to replan the town, in other words feedback. But the city that the New Urbanists are imitating, the traditional American town, did not need this. Its feedback loops were not a decade apart, but every day, as families, businesses and organizations grew it into a mixed-used city, without developers. That is why it was so alive. Too much has already been developed without feedback for this to take place in Cornell.

Previous: New Urbanism as dense sprawl

New Urbanism’s Andrés Duany is no stranger to editorial brawling, back in December I followed a progression of stories sparked by a his unveiling of a 64-point litany of mistakes that have been made by British architects and planners over the last 50 years. He charged architects with being infantile and too focused on ego and prestige, that they were “heedless of technical and social dysfunction and widespread lack of popularity” of their modernist designs. Well architects are a pretty sensitive bunch, and the flood gates opened; modernists struck back with an equally harsh criticism of Duany’s new urbanism. In the opening line of an article titled Thou shalt not follow Duany’s architectural gospel he is called the ‘Billy Graham of American architecture.”  The modernists claim that Duany with his strict guidelines for design and faux traditional styling lead to settlements more tailored to ‘wannabe Stepford Wives’ then real people. Next came an article by Stephen Bayle, and the gloves really came off when Bayle wrote  a scathing review of Poundbury, Duany’s British version of Seaside.

“To visit Poundbury is to be delivered to the furniture floor of a provincial department store in 1954, translated into architecture. It is fake, heartless, authoritarian and grimly cute.”  Then there were some salvo’s back by David Brussat who stated that “Prince Charles and Andrés Duany are making it harder for the modernists to whistle past the graveyard.”

Then today I came across another article in ARCADE where the magazine was good enough to reprint an exchange between Trevor Boddy and Andrés Duany from the editorial section of the Globe and Mail.  Duany has been selected to lead a design team that is heading up a plan by the Century Group for the Southlands project in the Vancouver suburb  of South Delta. Mr Boddy is most definitely not impressed with Duany’s plan and starts off an exchange between the two of them.

I have to admit that while I generally agree with the principles of New Urbanism in terms of compact walkable communities after reading this exchange I don’t really understand how Duany’s position and plan for this town is in fact urban.

“Southlands, which is designed specifically to embody food self-sufficiency, devotes 42% of the land to agriculture and keeps 26% open for other purposes. That kind of diversity — and not a crude single standard — is what authentic urbanism calls for.”

The 56th Street Interface A lake fronting on 56th Street will form the foreground of a pleasing vista over the open farmland. The lake will function as a reservoir for natural drainage and irrigation water. image courtesy of the southlands project — www.southlandsintransition.ca

42% of the land for agriculture? This sounds more like a farming town then an urban environment. He then goes on to specify that residences will have a significant amount of this space FOR agriculture. Of course specifying that the open space in your back yard is for urban agriculture does not by any way shape or means guarantee that it will actually be USED for agriculture. Sure food self sufficiency is an important direction for cities in the future but to assume that everyone is actually going to plant and tend a full garden in these yards is just a little naive. As a general rule people are just way too lazy for that, what happens when homeowners don’t decide to make use of these agricultural spaces? My guess is that it looks a lot like a lawn. Furthermore what is stopping existing suburban municipalities from claiming that they meet these qualifications for new urbanism, just convert those vanity lawns into gardens and you’ll be well on your way to new urbanism.

I know  I am over simplifying things  but I don’t think I’m too far off the mark . Take a look at the linked articles, decide for yourself, and please comment  if you have a different opinion. I would love to hear other perspectives on how you think we should build our cities. I think I should mention , I don’t think that the Southlands project is bad, it looks like a pretty nice place to live, I just dispute the statement that it is urban. It looks a lot like my grandmother’s town.

Not everyone agrees with me though; to read the perspective of people who love Southlands new  urbanist project go here: http://www.southlandsintransition.ca/

I ett inlägg på stadsmiljödebattören Johannes Åsbergs relativt nylanserade YIMBY Göteborg, systersajt till YIMBY Stockholm, hittar jag en länk till en video på Youtube där arkitekten Andres Duany, en av förgrundsgestalterna inom den sk nyurbanismen, i ett föredrag i San Antonio 1991 berättar om den moderna trafikplaneringens tillkortakommanden. Mycket tänkvärt och dessutom underhållande.

Videoklippet, som är en del av ett längre föredrag på ämnet nyurbanism som i sin helhet finns att se direkt via Youtube (uppdelat i nio videoklipp), är en bra inkörsport för dig som är intresserad av nyrbanism och modern stadplanering. Då de dessutom är underhållande så kan de vara ett bra sätt att kombinera nytta med nöje en regnig sommardag.

Andres Duany och hans fru Elisabeth Plater-Zyberk driver idag arkitektbyrån DPZ och tilldelades nyligen det prestigefyllda internationella arkitekturpriset 2008 Notre Dame Richard Driehaus Prize.

I ett inlägg på stadsmiljödebattören Johannes Åsbergs relativt nylanserade YIMBY Göteborg, systersajt till YIMBY Stockholm, hittar jag en länk till en video på Youtube där arkitekten Andres Duany, en av förgrundsgestalterna inom den sk nyurbanismen, i ett föredrag i San Antonio 1991 berättar om den moderna trafikplaneringens tillkortakommanden. Mycket tänkvärt och dessutom underhållande.

Videoklippet, som är en del av ett längre föredrag på ämnet nyurbanism som i sin helhet finns att se direkt via Youtube (uppdelat i nio videoklipp), är en bra inkörsport för dig som är intresserad av nyrbanism och modern stadplanering. Då de dessutom är underhållande så kan de vara ett bra sätt att kombinera nytta med nöje en regnig sommardag.

Andres Duany och hans fru Elisabeth Plater-Zyberk driver idag arkitektbyrån DPZ och tilldelades nyligen det prestigefyllda internationella arkitekturpriset 2008 Notre Dame Richard Driehaus Prize.

I ett inlägg på stadsmiljödebattören Johannes Åsbergs relativt nylanserade YIMBY Göteborg, systersajt till YIMBY Stockholm, hittar jag en länk till en video på Youtube där arkitekten Andres Duany, en av förgrundsgestalterna inom den sk nyurbanismen, i ett föredrag i San Antonio 1991 berättar om den moderna trafikplaneringens tillkortakommanden. Mycket tänkvärt och dessutom underhållande.

Videoklippet, som är en del av ett längre föredrag på ämnet nyurbanism som i sin helhet finns att se direkt via Youtube (uppdelat i nio videoklipp), är en bra inkörsport för dig som är intresserad av nyrbanism och modern stadplanering. Då de dessutom är underhållande så kan de vara ett bra sätt att kombinera nytta med nöje en regnig sommardag.

Andres Duany och hans fru Elisabeth Plater-Zyberk driver idag arkitektbyrån DPZ och tilldelades nyligen det prestigefyllda internationella arkitekturpriset 2008 Notre Dame Richard Driehaus Prize.

I watched the Canadian mockumentary; Radiant City today. (It was a birthday present from my parents) The movie basically follows around a family that has recently moved into one of Calgary’s southernmost communities, trying to look at the ways life in the ‘burbs has affected each member of the family. Incidentally, you can see my house in one of the segments shot from a helicopter. Although the mother seems happy about the move, the children and husband seem much more reluctant to embrace their new home. The film is mixed in with some great interviews with authors, architects and urban planners (one of which is Andres Duany, whom I spoke of in an earlier post) that give a great insight into urban sprawl in North America. There are some equally interesting statistics that show how far we have gone in turning our once lively cities in gloomy race tracks, forcing us to drive for any and all of our transportation needs. Check out the this trailer, then check out the film.

I wrote a letter to the makers of this film, congradulating them on their great work. You can read my letter on the following page if you want:

Hello,

My name is Shawn Champagne and I have just finished watching your film « Radiant City ». I don’t normally write to filmmakers after watching a movie I enjoyed, but in this case I had to make an exception. I truly feel as if you made this film just for me. It was given to me as a present from my parents back home. I’m from Calgary (Somerset. You can actually see my house in one of the flyovers of the movie) and I am studying urban planning in the south of France, in Aix-en-Provence. I chose to study urban planning in Europe because I really just got sick of the way real estate developers have become the new planners in North America. There is no thought process put into the designing of cities anymore, simply cookie cutter homes in cookie cutter lots in cookie cutter “communities”.

While studying here, many of my French classmates ask me to describe what life is like back home and the kind of community I live in. As a response, I simply hop onto google maps, zoom onto my house and progressively zoom outwards to show that my house is lost in a sea of other houses that are exactly alike. I also show them how far I need to go to shop, go to school and meet up with friends. I find it odd when people here tell me how much they respect Canada and Canadians for their great efforts towards protecting our environment, when that is simply not the case. I have been living car-free in Europe for two years and I don’t miss having to drive around everywhere at all. Most of my friends here don’t have cars either. We simply have no need for them.

During your film you interviewed Ardres Duany, a proponent of “New Urbanism” and founder of DPZ, an urban planning firm from the states. I will be doing an internship this summer at the European affiliate of DPZ in Berlin, Germany. I look forward to working towards creating more urban density and maybe bringing some of the things I learn back home.

Keep up the great work and pass on my regards to all those involved in the making of your film,

Shawn Champagne
UPDATE; Here is the reply I received from the filmakers:

Hi Shawn,

Thanks so much for your note. I must admit to being envious of someone who can live car free – it’s really difficult here in Calgary, unless you spend all of your time trying to get around – doesn’t leave much time for anything else. We really enjoyed Andres Duany, I can imagine what a great experience working with an affiliate of theirs in Berlin will be fascinating. Best of luck with your studies and yes please bring some much needed sanity back here. I’ve passed your note on to Gary and Jim as well as the gang at the NFB.

Cheers, Shirley

I stumbled onto a great lecture on New Urbanism on YouTube today, given by Andres Duany, author of Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream. In this 9 part lecture, he addresses many of the facets of New Urbanism from retail, to housing, to social housing, to social mixity, to public spaces, etc. He compares the “New Urbanism” techniques to those of traditional suburban planning by using two side-by-side projectors and using very clear and straight forward examples of what each of these entail. Although I agree with most things he said, and learned a few things from these videos, I question his motivations in giving this seminar. Although his techniques seem to be well intended, they are very often hard to put into place in existing communities. After checking out his website, I found out that he is co-president of DPZ, a community planning company. So while his assumptions make perfect sense when applied to the plans of a new community, they are ill adapted for use in existing suburbs. Nevertheless, I’ll probably pick up “”Suburban Nation” down the road to see what else he has to say.

Saturday morning I participated in the 2^nd annual Shake and Bake 5K out in Mt. Laurel. This is the second real race that I’ve run since starting rehab work on my right knee in hopes of avoiding the knife. The time was somewhat respectable considering I still have not really gotten back into serious training (36.58.9) and that I figured that finishing with no pain was more important than finishing and being carried off via someone else’s power.

Now, Mt. Laurel is one of the New Urbanist developments that have been sprouting up across much of the country over the past 25-30 years. Andres Duany, considered by many to be the father of New Urbanism, developed Mt. Laurel’s master plan a few years ago, with plans well underway to complete phase II of the development in the near future. The site is about a 20-minute drive from downtown Birmingham with no traffic on U.S. Hwy 280. Green and khaki signs point you towards this enclave that is nestled among farmland and other new subdivision projects in various states of progress. The signs can lead you through a more scenic, winding path or a straight shot to the state road that runs in front of the entrance.

Once inside its low sitting stone walls, it feels as if you’ve been transported to the set of the Truman Show, only it’s been made to resemble what the ideal community in Birmingham could have looked like long ago. The homes being built here are of the highest quality and can cost you anywhere from $200,000 to $400,000. Streets are tree lined and there’s even one of those ideal downtown areas with the local hardware store, soda fountain shop and excellent restaurant. There is a Montessori school, traditional elementary school and an Episcopal church. There are brick pavers covering most of the sidewalks and the site includes a nursery where plants are grown for the landscaping of the “town.” Recreational amenities are abundant in the form of playgrounds and a swimming pool. Planning wise, this is an ideal community coming to life.

Here’s what I don’t get: people move out here to this community, buy their new old house out in this ideal town layout, get into their cars and drive 30-50 minutes due to traffic congestion to their jobs in the big city, get in their cars again at the end of the day to come home while stopping at the big boxes for their needs and the grocery stores for pre-prepared meals and then pull into their garages and roll up the sidewalks in their ideal world to surf the Internet and take part in a virtual community while ignoring the beauty surrounding them. This effective takes away from the walkability factor that many of these communities are based upon.

During the race today, there were several residents out walking and showing support for the runners. I especially like the little boy that had decided to write “Go Daddy!” in red chalk on the sidewalk this morning while his mother watched on. I must say that these were the most residents that I have ever seen walking the streets of Mt. Laurel at any time of day. The other freaky moment came as I walked over after the race to check out the farmer’s market taking place in the town square section. I suddenly realized that there was a dog following me on my right side. I turned and looked down to see what it looked like and the owner was immediately apologetic for the dog just trying to come up and say hello. I saw her later as I went to the car to grab some Gatorade after the race and she made a point of saying that she was keeping her dog away. It kind of made me wonder just how community driven the neighborhood could be at times.

I am definitely not the first person to ever write about the success or failure of this “new” type of housing development. And I’m definitely not going to knock the virtual community that exists today because it allows for people who would have otherwise lost contact to keep in touch. It just struck me today while I was attempting to catch my breath while checking out the homes throughout the property that some people seek to find the perfection in the good old days and are paying a premium for it and then not taking advantage of it. Homes of similar size are available in beautiful sections of the city of Birmingham for much less than their Mt. Laurel counterparts, with the price still being cheaper after paying for renovation costs. The basis of these ideal downtowns still exists if only in building form throughout the region. The need to design new developments in the traditional style is a noble cause indeed, but why can’t we reuse what we’ve already got first?