Andrés Duany spoke earlier this week in Cincinnati as part of a small lecture series about sustainable urbanism that's mostly hosted by the UC School of Planning and the Northern Kentucky University Institute for Public Leadership run by former Cinci mayor Roxanne Qualls.
Anyway, I'd seen Duany speak 5 years ago at the AIAS Forum in Chicago and his lecture then, as I remember it, was solidly focused on the ideas that most people talk about in relation to New Urbanism. That is, dense villages, traditional aesthetics, stoops etc.
The lecture this Wednesday was markedly different. He began by acknowledging that we were an academic audience (he'd spoken a couple times earlier in the day to more political audiences) and said he therefore felt comfortable talking to us more about theory. (Now, I understand that he was using a tactic to endear us to him. He's something of a televangelist these days; a brilliant speaker who has obviously adjusted the way he speaks to people because of all of the intense criticism he's had to respond to over the years.)
His message is now much more oriented to sustainable development and what I think most of us would classify as smart growth. He spoke about the importance of strengthening existing urban neighborhoods, praised ideas like critical regionalism, accepted the value of contemporary aesthetics in architecture and (mostly) descried the existence of zoning laws that prevent the creation of New York City, which has the lowest per capita energy consumption in the nation.
So it seems his work is less related to architecture and style these days, but more on changing zoning laws, municipality by municipality. The "transect" is still central to his theories, and they're developing new zoning codes that use the transect.
I didn't think about this until later, but suspect that if he were pressed, he'd regret having created places like Seaside (isolated pockets of urbanism that don't have the benefit of regional connectivity and infrastructural efficiency).
WonderK, you were there too. Does this sound like an accurate representation of the lecture?
I'd be interested to hear what others think. Is New Urbanism still the devil of traditional design? Some say that the biggest criticism is that it's neither new nor urban (places like Seaside look a heckuva lot like Ebenezar Howard's Garden City schemes), but if we think of the "urbanism" theory has more related to his ideas for zoning etc, it really could be classified as "new", no?
archtopus, thanks for the extensive write-up and posting this (architecture discussion yay!). I admit I don't know what a transect is and will go google it now...
It's good to hear that he's thinking more about a larger view of "urbanism" than just one little town plan popped here and there all across the country. There are amazing challenges in existing urban conditions - for example, former factory cities like Flint, MI, and Binghamton NY, which some people think are beyond hope. Is he thinking of ways to solve those?
I think a move toward "smart growth " vs the new urbanism was inevitable; and I think that it's a good thing. The idea of creating a traditional architectural form doesn't really bother me, and I can appreciate the New Urbanisms typical focus on doing traditional architecture accurately w/ proper attention to detailing, etc.. . However, I do have a problem w/ a focus on traditional architecture that leaves no room for change, and contemporary design that is able to embrace sustainability in ways that traditional buildings might not. So, I think (aside from Duany...whether he's actually moving in this direction or not - which I have no reason to think he isn't) that I'm ok w/ saying that maybe we've moved beyond the New Urbanism all together: and using a term like Smart Growth might more accurately reflect the key points of the New urbanism that are worth holding onto - while embracing a mindset that allows for more environmentally proactive architecture.
Regarding the criticisms of the New Urbanism you mentioned: I don't really care if it isn't "new"...or if it's not entirely urban. I think there are key planning strategies in it that are good for community - and environmental sustainability. Those are two things that aren't coupled together in development strategy very often - that to me is very smart: I'm not saying it's perfect...of course it's not, but there are a lot of fantastic ideas that must be paid attention to that go far beyond its name, and traditional architecture.
Seaside was designed in 1979, which means its just around the corner from National Landmark eligiblity (a bit sobering to consider, I think). Its fair to say that New Urbanists have evolved from this point of departure, although most critics of New Urbanism don't manage to look past those 80 acres on the Florida panhandle.
Meanwhile, Duany and other self-proclaimed New Urbanists have definitely embraced "urbanism", and are responsible for re-writing the zoning codes in places like Miami, Chicago, Denver and Nashville as well as a host of smaller cities.
As for the Transect, it is the conceptual basis for almost all New Urbanist work, and is the answer to the critique that New Urbanism isn't urban. Essentially the Transect proposes is that there are a contintiuty and degrees of urbanism - some very big and intense (ie historic downtowns), some less so, some more suburban, some more rural, and some distinctly rural. The Transect suggests all zones of the city are mixed-use, its a just a question of intensity (and therefore it is an alternative to convential use-based zoning practice). What is often not understood, even by Duany's ardent followers, is that the Transect is a conceptual tool that must be calibrated to individual places - what is T6 (ie: downtown) and therefore T5-2 will look very different in Miami than in Battle Creek Michigan. Also, it doesn't have to be a continium - radical shifts of scale are possible (ie: going from T1 to T6, which more or less happens with NYC's Central Park).
The Transect has also become the organizing device for almost all of the New Urbanists' typological interests, and the means by which they get categorized. Thus certain building types, frontage types, roadway types, landscape types, park types, fence types, etc are appropriate in certain Transect zones, but not others (and generally, there will be a sliding scale by which types overlap). Check out the diagrams in the Article 6 of the Smart Code for an illustration.
Where you can fault this system of thought is by recognizing that the Transect only encompasses one axis. Most cities need at least two axes, if not a three-dimensional matrix of place types, to describe how they actually appear.
As for the term "New Urbanism"... the word "new" is a marketing and PR trope. No one would have paid attention to them if they called themselves the "old urbanists". In America, we only pay attention to things that are new.
i like where he is going with his lectures and writings, even if i still find the paternalistic aspect disturbing.
somehow i have to agree with koolhaas that urbanism and planing when put together seem a kind of mis-appropriation or mis-match of ideas; simply because the urban world is not only ungoverned but ungovernable...we will never get what we want, no matter how hard we plan and how restrictive (or open) the covenants...and perhaps things work better that way any way.
that duany and calthorpe are beginning to take on this idea too is i think very interesting...the transect and form-based zoning are both a kind of attempt to keep things open so urban/rural/suburban forms can change over time...
because these guys really are trying to practice what they preach in real offices there is an integration of reality into the dogma that is leading to rather interesting things with their versions of the NU movement...which is a good thing. It makes things much more robust. And is a very nice antidote to Kunstler...
Then again i still find the NU planning to be too graphic design-ish when applied. maybe this is another version of the criticism that NU lacks dimensionality that m. loomis has brought up... it is nonetheless moving in interesting directions...very nice to see that even polemicists are not all hard-boiled prunes.
Duany's a total televangelist, I saw him speak a few years ago and it was a borderline tent revival.
If he's seriously not interested in aesthetics anymore then what's left? Smart Growth? We've already got a word for that. Strengthening existing town centers? You don't have to be 'New Urbanist' to be interested in these things.
It sounds to me like he's totally toning down the traditional aesthetics thing b/c that's what NU takes flak for in an academic environment, and it kind of reveals the bankrupcy of the NU position in general: focus on form is silly and distracting at best, disingenuous at worst, but if you take that away then there are other movements that already do the same things that the NU true believers say they want to do, and without the ridiculous aesthetic baggage.
NUs conflation of the superficial and the operational, their mixup between what cities look like and how they work, continues to do serious damage. This kind of deliberate switch up between form and substance is bad planning and it slides right into bad politics.
the aesthetic seems ridiculous to all except the users. i live in an old urbanism area. a mix of turn of the century houses, town homes, multistory apartment buildings churches etc. any new construction must go through a historic planning commission and the neighborhood association. a free monthly magazine, the urban times, gives the downtown lowdown on Indy's historic neighborhoods. each neighborhood posts the activity that is going on within its fiefdom, ranging from spring cleanups to flea markets to new construction. often designs are rejected or forced to change because they do not meet the aesthetics of the neighborhood. of course, the once esplanaded streets that run through this neighborhood were torn out and replaced with pavement effectively putting my crib between a two one way freeways that serve the suburbnites at the neighborhood's expense. a real potential for a return to old urbanism may get rolling on that soon.
I know, people like historicism, even when it's fake. And they'll ignore the real problems, like those freeways, as long as they get their columns and cornices.
it may not be the histor-icky details that the old urban neighborhoods love but the un-forced, un-self-conscious, but much smarter thinking that went into a lot of what we still have in the old neighborhoods. when new work is as smart, it often doesn't matter if it has cornice, columns, or not.
to all those who love to hate seaside, i always just remember that holl was one of the first architects of commercial space there. his building was both modern and smart (if poorly detailed) and it fit into that environment just fine.
1) Currently in the process of reading Duany's 'Suburban Nation' (an excellent book in my opinion), I can easily understand archtopus' argument about New Urbanism. Having just spent the last semester focusing on urban design in my 4th-year studio, I can't stop thinking about things like sprawl and the decimation of rural countryside (I'm from Vermont) which makes me incredibly nauseous (see Williston, VT). My dilemma is that, like with reading Christopher Alexander's 'A New Theory of Urban Design,' I'm struggling with what the solution is. Before I'm jumped all over for just proposing that there's a one-stop shop solution (I'm not don't worry), I should just clarify that when I say solution, I merely mean steps really, to enhance our urban environment. Like with Alexander and Duany, I agree completely with their research and observations, but begin to get a bit apprehensive when I start reading their "rules" or "guidelines." You cannot just attempt to replicate the past (does "Middle Ages" ring a bell). Let's work to develop urban design strategies which DO make use of the successful strategies of the past which the New Urbanists have so intensely examined, BUT also make use of the vast amount of technology we have at our disposal. Let's look strongly at sustainable methods of development which will improve not only our quality of life, but our planet's. Our civilization stems from the minds which prosper in the city, and simply replicating the past doesn't move us forward does it? Who wants to live in a simulacrum like Disney World?
2) Last Fall in my Urban Design + Planning class, aptly named "The City," we spent the semester doing a transect study of Boston which you all are welcome to check out. As always, comments and criticisms are welcome.
frankly, i think if you did a random poll, well over half of the respondents would want to live in disney world. That's the disconnect between the "educated" design world and the general population. nostalgia not progress is the overriding myth that people and not just white suburban people look for. the nostalgiamyth exists for new immigrants as much as it does for my mother. it just may take a generation for it to trickle down to a reality.
I'm sure it would be more like 80%. That's what I'm saying. It's depressing.
NU made a huge mistake in trying to tap into this nostalgia BS, and tying all that up with some decent observations about how cities should work. They can't go back on that.
Now people think they're getting good planning when they're just getting the superficial trappings. It's a total shell game. Keep the symbols, swap out the substance.
Front porches are great, but you don't need plastic ionic columns to have a usable front porch. But if you give someone the columns, along with an unusable porch that's only three feet deep, if they're in that 80%, chances are they'll be happy with that. And this is partly because of jokers like Duany playing politics and nostalgia games.
Are you saying that's okay because they're the majority and we're a bunch of disconnected "educated" (nice quotes) designers?
That's interesting that you bring up Disney World, vado. I've had a theory (that of course I haven't been able to test) that those who live in walkable urban areas are less prone to vacation at Disney World. If one of the amusement park's primary values is to let people experience the fun of an urban environment, why would those who experience one daily bother to vacation there? Perhaps the popularity of Disney World indicates an underlying desire for suburbanites to experience that which they lack.
Yeah, I think you represented the lecture really well. I did mention this in the green thread, and I kind of steered my synopsis towards "what did his lecture have to do with sustainability". I have a couple of comments:
1) I really like the whole transect thing. It breaks down city planning into workable diagrams that make sense. And I understand how it is helpful for "quick planning", as he was advocating, since one of his major points in this talk was how city and town governments don't have the money to put together full fledged planning studies, and how creating zoning codes can be "quick and dirty" but still effective.
2) While I respect the fact that NYC has the lowest per capita energy consumption in the nation, I disagree with the idea that we should "leave it alone", as Duany proposed. Just because it's "lowest per capita", that doesn't mean that it doesn't use enormous amounts of energy, and could do better to incorporate more renewable energy strategies. Do I want a big wind turbine on the top of the Chrysler Building? No, that's dumb. But I don't think any place should be exempt from "smart growth" initiatives.....
The CNU has been sleeping with the USGBC and spawned LEED-ND. The only blatantly historicist credits (I'm looking at the september 2005 draft -memo to self, get the latest version!) is 'applying regional precedents in urbanism and architecture'. this can be interpreted as smart growth, but IMO many regional precedents and vernacular types of buildings/urban fabrics in the US are not worth repeating or invoking as good/sustainable design. there are exceptions, but those are rarer then the CNU states.
The entire category of 'compact, complete & connected neighborhoods' transcends the CNU creed- other influences including the late jane jacobs and many other visionaries have espoused alternatives to the euclidian monocultures of suburban cul desacs and commercial strips. Even corb and wright had interesting mixed use ideas mixed in with their utoipian urbs.
for those not sitting with LEED-ND on their minds, here are all the other credits from the 2005 draft (now being tested in pilot projects):
Location Efficiency - 30 points
(renamed for the pilot version: smart location and linkages)
Prerequisite: Transportation Efficiency
Prerequisite: Water and Stormwater Infrastructure Efficiency
Credit: Contaminated Brownfields Redevelopment
Credit: High Cost Contaminated Brownfields Redevelopment
Credit: Adjacent, Infill or Previously Developed Sites
Credit: Reduced Automobile Dependence
Credit: Contribution to Jobs-Housing Balance
Credit: School Proximity
Credit: Access to Public Spaces
Environmental Preservation
(not included in the pilot rating system)
Prerequisite: Imperiled Species and Ecological Communities
Prerequisite: Parkland Preservation
Prerequisite: Wetland & Water Body Protection
Prerequisite: Erosion & Sedimentation Control
Prerequisite: Farmland Preservation
Credit: Support Off-Site Land Conservation
Credit: Site Design for Habitat or Wetland Conservation
Credit: Restoration of Habitat or Wetlands
Credit: Conservation Management of Habitat or Wetlands
Credit: Steep Slope Preservation
Credit: Minimize Site Disturbance During Construction
Credit: Minimize Site Disturbance Through Site Design
Credit: Maintain Stormwater Runoff Rates
Credit: Reduce Stormwater Runoff Rates
Credit: Stormwater Treatment
Credit: Outdoor Hazardous Waste Pollution Prevention
Compact, Complete & Connected Neighborhoods - 39 points
(neighborhood pattern and design)
Prerequisite: Open Community
Prerequisite: Compact Development
Prerequisite: Diversity of Uses
Credit: Compact Development
Credit: Transit-Oriented Compactness
Credit: Diversity of Uses
Credit: Housing Diversity
Credit: Affordable Rental Housing
Credit: Affordable For-Sale Housing
Credit: Reduced Parking Footprint
Credit: Community Outreach and Involvement
Credit: Block Perimeter
Credit: Locating Buildings to Shape Walkable Streets
Credit: Designing Building Access to Shape Walkable Streets
Credit: Designing Buildings to Shape Walkable Streets
Credit: Comprehensively Designed Walkable Streets
Credit: Street Network
Credit: Pedestrian Network
Credit: Maximize Pedestrian Safety and Comfort
Credit: Superior Pedestrian Experience
Credit: Applying Regional Precedents in Urbanism and Architecture
Credit: Transit Subsidy
Credit: Transit Amenities
Credit: Access to Nearby Communities
Credit: Adaptive Reuse of Historic Buildings
Resource Efficiency - 31 points
(green construction and technology)
Credit: Certified Green Building
Credit: Energy Efficiency in Buildings
Credit: Water Efficiency in Buildings
Credit: Heat Island Reduction
Credit: Infrastructure Energy Efficiency
Credit: On-Site Power Generation
Credit: On-Site Renewable Energy Sources
Credit: Efficient Irrigation p
Credit: Greywater & Stormwater Reuse
Credit: Wastewater Management
Credit: Reuse of Materials
Credit: Recycled Content
Credit: Regionally Provided Materials
Credit: Construction Waste Management
Credit: Comprehensive Waste Management
Credit: Light Pollution Reduction
Credit: Contaminant Reduction in Brownfields Remediation
the LEED-ND pilot guidelines can be downloaded as a PDF here. the pdf prohibits copying and pasting so I couldn't easily post the final credits...
i'm not saying it's okay or unokay.i'm just calling it like i see it. i don't see how you can blame new urbanism for cheap construction materials. cheap construction materials go on the most expensive houses these days.
Now that labor costs are higher than they were a few centuries ago, nobody can afford to pay a stoncarver to make their ionic capitals. So if you like that sort of thing you're only gonna be able to find it in molded plastic.
So yeah, New Urbanism, as an ideology that promotes the use of empty symbols beyond their technological or cultural relevance is to blame for their proliferation and persistence in cheap, fake materials.
I don't see those as empty symbols at all. what symbols of home are there? shipping containers? villa savoiye. for us maybe, but not for others. i guess architecture students need to go on an equivalent of a lds mission and hit the suburbs to preach the gospel of "good" design.
ironically, isn't the new urbanism just another form of modernist master planning? both in terms of the aims of the transect to the marker colorful city plans coming out of duany's and calthorpe's offices, the new urbanism is essentially attempting to give a comprehensive rational order to the city. without question it is offering a new dogma (anti-automobile, mixed use, etc.), but isn't it plain to see by now that changing the zoning code is still playing the same game we've been playing for the last eighty years? in my view, there is something fundamentally wrong with the approach. it's not the plan that needs to change, but the way we plan.
that is a good point jafidler, and likely one that duany et al would agree with.
i wouldn't say new urbanism is modernist. more close to howard than team X, really. if you mean to conflate modernism with dogmatic aesthetic concerns...maybe. but even corbu repudiated his early versions of the city radiant by the end of his career (or so i recall reading somewhere)...
i don't think the transect or form-based zoning are at all the same old shit. they are in many ways quite radical. the form-based zoning could in fact become something akin to performance based zoning, where the local citizenry decide what functions can exist in their area (chicago used to be based on this system)...this opens up a new can of worms however.
about disney...disney land and disney sea are both an hour from my house and we go often enough cuz of the kids that i am nearly sick of them...the urbanism at disney sea is based on northern italian cities, including a replica of venice, with gondolas and the whole lark...it is actually quite nice...but i don't want to live there.
To be honest while i LOVED milano (the real place, not the disney version) as a place to hang out and visit i know i couldn't stand living there either. The place really felt to me like a tomb. a lovely tomb, but still quite finished off in a sad way. Disney is ok because it is clearly a product and not a place to live, but if it WERE, I would probably end up not going there so much either...
still i think vado's observations are pretty much correct. the modern city is not to blame for the modern world, but a product of it...
jump - As an organization, the CNU is deliberately and consciously modeled after CIAM and TeamX (surprisingly, the TeamX members are revered by some of the leading NUists, and Giancarlo de Carlo was given an award at CNU10 or 11). The CNU, however, is up to its 15th meeting, and you will recall that CIAM10 was dissovled and superseded by TeamX. I've been waiting for the CNU's version of TeamX to emerge for 5 years now... On the other hand, your suggestion the CNU learns more from Eb Howard is also correct - definitely in terms of form and diagram, the CNU obviously prefers Howard to Hilbiseimer or Corbusier.
There are a few provocative comments in this discussion that I would like to hear elaborated, because I think they get at the core of the CNU agenda:
from jafidler - "it's not the plan that needs to change, but the way we plan" I take your critique to mean that any type of planning that relies on zoning (whether use or form, or transect-based) is suspect. But I'm not sure Houston is a such a great model.
from sevensixfive - "NUs conflation of the superficial and the operational, their mixup between what cities look like and how they work, continues to do serious damage. This kind of deliberate switch up between form and substance is bad planning and it slides right into bad politics." My suggestion is that the CNU began with form / superficial (ie front porches) and has slowly moved towards the operational - that is, while they learned to understand the operational, the CNU emphasized the consequences of what was in fact important to them (front porches or not important per se, but the operational mode of relating to the street). In my observation, the CNU has become much more concerned with substance than form in the past few years. That said, politics is as much form as substance.
certainly in terms of appearances and aspirations i would associate the CNU with howard, but in terms of a prescribed formula to achieve a better city it is without question in the modernist tradition, i.e. a utopian endeavor. my issue with the CNU is that its formula is neither reactive nor speculative. in a world marked by change fixed plans and formulaic responses are too detached from the immediate (and impending) circumstances that comprise urban form. part of the difficulty that duany is having in new orleans is that the magnitude of the design challenges he is facing is far more complex than the simple formula he has been prescribing for the the last 25 years.
howard is not utopian, or prescriptive? i see no difference on that level between howard, the modernists, or, for that matter the original christian fundamentalists who first invented and built suburbia...
duany is also facing problems associated with his inevitably elitist line of work...it is hard to be inclusive when your masters are exclusive, and always have been...in that sense at least NU is being finally tested on the moral grounds it has always preached and never lived up to...pity that it so far is not very succesful on that end...
i am currently writing a phd based on an opposing stance to NU, but i nonetheless believe the form-based zoning has the potential to be very reactive and is not as formulaic as the graphic plans might lead one to believe...
on other hand, urbanism is always behind the times. it cannot help but be so. it almost feels like you are looking for a better formula, not a change in perception (one in which a priori knowledge is no longer considered?)....
the problems duany is facing in new orleans are social, technological, economic, ecological, political, you name it. it's not an easy problem for anyone, but even more so, for people with preconceived ideas about what a city should be.
in another thread, jump, you were making the case that typical planning and urban design principles don't apply in places like shanghai and hong kong. that struck a chord with me. i've spent some time in india, and really can't imagine applying standardized planning formula anywhere in that country. urban form is generated by too many wildly inconsistent variables. we can try to understand those variables in an attempt to "plan" or at best anticipate future urban forms, but to stipulate "mixed-use" or "walkable" or even zone such a place seems almost laughable. maybe the new urbanists can learn something from mumbai and hong kong.
i don't think that the roots of n.u., at least as dpz shaped it, were rooted in that of dialectic between form/operation. their interest has almost always been in the operational - form is simply a means to an end. they've willingly used imagery (which, let's be honest, is almost always client driven) as propaganda in advancing the structural changes.
point in case: as someone who grew up literally next door to seaside, if you look at the houses as they were developed over time (which occurs roughly east to west across the development), they change from the relatively simple riffs on a 'beach vernacular' common to the area (see the walter chatham, deborah berke, victoria casasco, holl, and anthony ames projects in particular) and duany actively sought out more 'modern' ny/yale axis architects to promote to potential homebuyers. also, the homes tended to be much more modest in size and detailing and were built as vacation homes. what happens over time, though, is that as the development becomes more successful, the economic dynamics change - the land becomes much more valuable, investors move in, houses get larger and more ornate, and by the time the thing fills out, modesty on the architect's part tends to be chucked out the window. even mockbee's project is largely neutered from the original design (which included flying rebar as the grillage on the porch areas). is this duany's fault? i'd argue not. is seaside much better than what the 'norm' was for development down that way? absolutely and without question.
i don't think duany has held out seaside (or any of their early projects) as the answer to all that ails urbanism - it is an alternative, one of hopefully many. my take is that very few 'modern' urbanists have come up with compelling alternatives, which makes n.u. just that much bigger of a target.
if you can get past the aesthetic requirements (which dpz largely does not impose, except when requested by the client - and when they do, they try to 'play by the book' to make sure that the traditional character is not absolutely butchered), their concepts are pretty sophisticated and certainly could be taken, manipulated by aesthetics and coding, and derive a very vibrant kind of urbanism that becomes decoupled from any specific visual agenda. no one has really taken them up on it, though....
This is one of several passages worth quoting from the [url=http://www.cnu.org/charter
]Charter of the Congress for the New Urbanism[/url]
"urban places should be framed by architecture and landscape design that celebrate local history, climate, ecology, and building practice."
The problem is that climate, ecology and building practice are all much more quantifiable than history, local or otherwise. And local historical reference is too often tied to outdated building practice (that's that plastic ionic column) so the one conflicts with the other.
Climate and ecology are also relatively stable (we'll see). Building practice, being tied to technology, is not. And the stability of historical reference is pretty suspect too. You could make the usual linguistic arguments to support that instability, but I think it's more relevant to cite the mind numbing effects of nostalgia and the tendency people have to accept symbols over substance as referenced above. Like I said, that makes it too easy for an NU agenda to interlock with bad politics. Sell the sizzle not the steak.
So yeah, I think this runs through the agenda and founding documents of the CNU, whether they're trying to disown it now or not. To say 'that's what the clients want' is not really a valid argument. Plenty of clients wanted sprawl, too.
I'm with Barry: try an Eco-Urban thing, it's what you get when toss out the historicist BS, and use economic metrics to track the effectiveness of building practice. If NU is about history, climate, ecology, and building practice, then once you lose the history, let practice adapt, and keep a sharp eye on the weather, what you're left with ain't New Urbanism anymore.
there is a tendency by some planners to make decisions or present them dogmatically, refusing all kinds of possibilities in the name of their true way...it becomes apparent once we start looking at alternative urban forms in the middle east and the far east, which work in all kinds of different ways from what we are used to in north america and even europe...i don't know if one is better than another (i somehow doubt itbut there are definitley wasted opportunities as a result.
still it is i think easy to go the other way and simply assume NU is fundamentally flawed and has nothing to add. I dont think that is the case either, and i am deeply impressed with the devotion and energy that duany and calthorpe and the rest of the new urbanist crowd have put into their project to get something different built, whether I "like" it or not...
I can think of few architects who have been as consistent or as determined...and frankly i can think of few architects who are as willing to adapt their strategies to reality as it comes up. There is none of the "starving misunderstood artist" thing going on...and remarkably they are still moving their agenda forward, changing it as they learn and adapting it to the politically possible. That they can do that and STILL have an abstract theoretical approach (other than mere acceptance of reality) is very very impressive.
"frankly, i think if you did a random poll, well over half of the respondents would want to live in disney world. That's the disconnect between the "educated" design world and the general population. nostalgia not progress is the overriding myth that people and not just white suburban people look for. the nostalgiamyth exists for new immigrants as much as it does for my mother. it just may take a generation for it to trickle down to a reality."
i think vado makes a point here... where does NU's historicist / regionalist tendency come from? where does the nostalgiamyth come from? is new urbanism in part driven by a desire to deal with the lack of real public space / public life in america?
charles moore, [urlhttp://www.amazon.com/You-Have-Pay-Public-Life/dp/0262133733]'you have to pay for the public life', etc.[/url] talks about people's fascination with disneyland, and the re-creation of "the american main street", the idea of public space that really doesn't exist anymore in suburban or big city america but that people can pay money for... public something that we pay for, public privatized... nowadays, streets are not really public space in the tradition sense (from the greeks, etc.)... public is supposed to be: the common shared space of political action that is owned by everyone... the point being that, in america, what people think of as public is sometimes not really public... it's the space of automobiles, it's not the space owned by everybody its the space owned by nobody...
I wonder if, that nostalgiamyth exists for immigrants, and for our mothers each because they have a real memory of that type of public space, community... it still exists in other cities outside of north america, that pedestrian type of community... or maybe in the not so distant past in small town america, etc.
The problem is, that doesn't exist in america, it's very real that we live in the "automobile nation", the land of capitalism, industry driven and energy / oil driven society... "client/market serving" sometimes simply reinforces the status quo, whether it's political or design...
It would seem that making things better-- for community and environment-- needs to work within the american context. its the space of the market. given the billions of dollars invested in automobile infrastructure and in energy, etc. cities that work based on those assumptions, how do you create incentives for healthier, more sustainable living? I think what this boils down to, sustainable urbanism, community, etc. is public space. Public space isn't just about parks, it's about a different idea about urban living, its sustainable, pedestrian driven, about degrees of density... something that the new urbanists are trying to address...
I think there is something to be said for working with the market, structuring tradeoffs for developers to generate public space... working within the market, creating zoning approaches that give incentive to pay attention to public spaces... Making public space economically sustainable, tying public to rent value of a property... creating symbiotic relationships between public space and commercial spaces...
brink - i think i agree w/ you when you said "i think what this boils down to, sustainable urbanism, community, etc.. is public space." i think that is a key point of the New Urbanism that really should not go unnoticed (although it often does - which i find remarkable). people spend so much time arguing over the architecture that they seem unable to see the significance and strength of nu's focus on the city - community - public space ... which opens the door for sustainability, both socially and environmentally, that is fascinating.
so eco-urbanism? interesting idea - and will/should be a serious discussion in the years to come as sustainable buildings must be coupled w/ sustainable plans and designs for the city.
you mean the illusion of public space. most of the so-called public spaces are pseudo-townsquares in private developments; i find little difference here between the modernist plaza and new urbanist townsquare other than aesthetic differences. the ideal of public space in new urbanism is merely utopian.
i think that you're wrong when you say there is little difference between the modernist plaza, and the NU town square. there is an attention to what generates activity around the square that NU explores - that modernism never got around to. but, i'm willing to lay any support that i have for NU aside here because i think the critical point (public space) doesn't need a particular development strategy to gain importance. Attention to public space is crucial for community and ultimately genuine sustainability, but is often missing from how we plan our cities as a whole - regardless of how one thinks we should approach its design.
So, I guess this begs the questions: how can effectively designed public space effect communty and sustainability? Is this issue of public space central to healthy community and sustainability?
is public space really that crucial in this day and age? people are on thier cell phones on their laptops with their ipods in any public space that i enter. is the idea of public space a vestige of another time when people needed to come together for socialization and communal togetherness?
i would argue that an abundance of well designed public space allows for denser, and thus more sustainable, development... think of paris and other european cities for example... most of the housing stock there is very small in relation to the US... apartments have very little semi-public space in them (i.e. living rooms and family rooms in the american sense)... thus, there is a greater need for viable public spaces... i think this is contributing factor to the great street cafe culture... the cafe replaces the living room...
density is only sustainable if the sustainablity is designed into the density. viable public space is socioeconomic and cultural before it is architectural.
before discussing the merits of public space, i'm curious what people actually believe public space to be. the whole notion of public space has been so eroded by commodity, commercialization and private interests i'm not sure there's a definitive line. is the plaza in front of seagram public? i would say absolutely. is the sidewalk? sometimes. are parks? for the most part. is the public library? yes, thank goodness, perhaps one of the last few examples of truly public space. is a public museum public space if it costs $20 to get in? how about the subway? a shopping mall?
when duany or anyone else manufactures a townsquare in a manufactured city (or suburb as the case may be), i'm real hesitant to call it anymore public space than one of taubman's shopping malls.
interestingly enough this is a claim that has been picked out and tested by researchers...i can't recall their names at the moment but i have their papers somewhere on my machine...anyway, they were not able to say that new urbanism design led to better community, better commuting, or better anything at all really. Part of this was because New Urbanism communities are still rare enough to be filled with self selecting populations where results are likely skewed by non-typical residents...
but even with this self selection they mostly found that new urbanist communities led to no more community than elsewhere (as measured by surveys of neighbouring behaviour, as simple as greeting someone or helping with groceries and other indicators...). they did tend to have more people walking and as a result more casual meeting encounters, but nothing that could not be explained by the slef-selection issue above...so no powerful conclusions were possible.
Interestingly studies indicated INCREASED auto use in NU communities because the interconnectivity allowed more options for travel and thus more convenience/less congestion....but this too was not a large and powerful result...
i have not come across any credible research so far that suggests new urbanism actually meets its claims for community. at best the research says community MAY be encouraged...but also may not...
many articles indicate that many if not most of the goals of NU are not met by the planning...so far. One reason fo this (to pick the example of sustainability through less auto dependency) is because NU communities tend to be on the fringes and living in them invariably requires longer commutes for work, not shorter. The reason for this is that the economic/employment zones are not geographically limited in the way they were when old urbanism reigned king...When everyone works close to where they live NU makes sense, but when the employment cachement area is as large as a metrpolitan area (as is especially true for professionals) no amount of planning is going to lead to reduced auto-dependency. It can't, because society doesn't work in that manner anymore...anyway, the other claims, like improved community are similarly complicated and not amenable to resolution through paternalistic design-based solutions...
personally i think this means that there are issues with culture that need to be adressed through other means and not by design...This does not mean NU has no place, only that it is likely not the panacea we all hope for...
I think whoever said above that public space is socioeconomic and cultural before it is architectural has it dead right. I could list tons of modernist plaza that are super successful, take a look around Northern Europe sometime. There is no narrative of 'the failure of modernism' there because the public money that funded the maintenance and security of their public space never got cut like ours did. It's more a question of political will and culture than anything else.
I've also seen plenty of failed New Urbanist public space, a lot of it built via Hope VI, a HUD program to replace those hated (underfunded) tower-in-the-park public housing projects with cute little NU townhomes (that were then allowed to go to shit anyway once the photographers were gone).
And that classical European piazza 'cafe culture'? Try hanging out at one of those cafes when you're not constantly buying stuff, you'll see just how public it really is: 'Otra cafe con leche, por favor!'
I would agree that public space is first socioeconomic and cultural before it is architectural, but then, architecture can also be seen as both informed by and having an impact on socioeconomic and cultural concerns. Socioeconomic and cultural forces are contexts that can be read and engaged through architecture to foster the creation of a more pedestrian, sustainable, and more public urban space.
I agree, alot of the New Urbanist spaces might not really be effective public spaces... But I think one thing they understood was the contemporary north american context, something that is missing there that they could observe in old small town america or in other cultures, say europe... and they sought to deal with that context, whether their approach works or not is debatable...
A great book on this subject here: hannah arendt describes "the death of the public realm" in contemporary society... According to Arendt, that the public realm, what for centuries was that space of "freedom to speak" which had it's origins from the Greeks, no longer exists in contemporary society... In the past, "public" meant that you were "free", and "private" was basically the space of animal "labor"... That is, when you were in your private world, you were basically a servant in your home, whether it was cleaning or laboring to put food on your own table, struggling to survive... Basically, if you were dealing with your economics, you were a slave, animal labor, doing what it takes to survive... This is the origin of the meaning of public and private. What was "economy" was a private affair, it was everyone's own business, taking care of their own household... It was only once you were able to leave your home, enter the shared and open space of the city streets that you became a political individual, you had a voice, public was the space of "work", which is completely different from "labor". What's happened since the enlightenment and the industrial revolution and the division of labor is: that public realm has been displaced by what Arendt calls "the social realm"... This was new: the concept of "mass society" which, was the concern of politics. Suddenly, things are inverted: economy is now perceived as a political concern, the space of the city is now the space of economy, the space of labor, social sciences and global economy... And the home is now equipped with luxuries, security, conveniences and ammenities, that private space perceived as a bastion of safety against that threatening world outside... Public no longer existed, except maybe in the form of privatized public space...
Re: cellphones, internet, mobile communications, I think those are developing in part in response to the context, they are sort of damage control rather than the reason why we don't need public space... I mean, people need public space, but within the context of a lack of public space, a socioeconomic and cultural machine that doesn't generate real urban public space, virtual publics are one alternative... Not a very good one I think, there is still a big difference between virtual interaction and real life interactions...
Re: the european piazza... agreed, the piazza even in europe is somewhat commerce related, but I think in europe compared to america, public spaces still mean something a great deal more than a barren piece of purely formal urban space. Public certainly has to do with participation, how people take ownership of that space. In Rome for example, piazzas are alive at all times of the day, there are fountains, the types of daily performances, a market in the morning evolving into a bar scene, and an open concert or book sale at night... True there's money flow, but the difference is in the way people engage with the space... A stranger can feel at home there. Contrast that with many modernist plazas in America, they are rarely as successful, and there is always an issue of security and control... No loitering, no sitting down on the street, no consuming alcohol, no unofficial performances, no event without consent, no smoking within 25 feet of any doorway or space where people are working (labor)... So this so called "public space" is the space of "do no harm", basically it's the mentality that we've been ingrained with that it is NOT your property, you do not own it, you have not right to disturb it... You'll be fined for disturbing "public property"... Even in certain spaces designated for political action, designated spaces for legal protests etc., you need permission...
Given contemporary markets and economy, public space it seem MUST be economically sustainable first... Density is good for business.
jump, I'm not at all surprised that research would show the unsuccessful nature of most of the built "New Urbanist" development. And as I mentioned in the original post, I don't think Duany would be too surprised either. The original point of this thread was that building isolated dense communities is no longer the focus or intention of New Urbanist thinkers. They (at least Duany) are now more interested in making broad application of smart growth policies that encourage social diversity, environmental sustainability and infrastructural interconnectivity. The whole idea of the transect, to the extent that I understand it, is all about a continuum of urban space from intense urban to wilderness. In that system it would seem very counterintuitive to stick a T5 (fairly high density) in the middle of a T1 (wilderness).
as far as options of modes of transportation go, well i for one took a walk to the store to pick up a few items that could be easily carried. probably a two mile roundtrip jaunt. but then later i decided to drive to the video store. but before getting in the car i chatted with my neighbor and a friend of his outiside my building where they were kickin back with some hard lemonades. i got options baby.
where were they kicking back with hard lemonades? was it inside or outside your building? was it legal?
when you walked to the store, did you talk to anybody on the street? what kinds of activity or urban life or interaction did you see along the way? would you stop anywhere along the way and just chill out with other people there?
when you drove to the video store, were you renting a video to watch in the privacy of your own home?
there are places where you walk down the street and on an odd night there are movies projected on a wall in a public plaza and young people and old couples come out and gather and watch a movie or watch the football game (soccer)... or there might be open concerts. people walk around with drinks in hand all the time, stepping out of bars and walking into the next, or sitting in a public place drinking and chatting with people they just met... you will walk down the street and see a bunch of older retired men or women sitting on lawn chairs on the street in front of their homes chatting with their buddies. The streets feel safe because there are always people about... you feel secure because you're having a shared public experience with your neighbor, not just a passing view into another person's private activity...
The New New Urbanism
Andrés Duany spoke earlier this week in Cincinnati as part of a small lecture series about sustainable urbanism that's mostly hosted by the UC School of Planning and the Northern Kentucky University Institute for Public Leadership run by former Cinci mayor Roxanne Qualls.
Anyway, I'd seen Duany speak 5 years ago at the AIAS Forum in Chicago and his lecture then, as I remember it, was solidly focused on the ideas that most people talk about in relation to New Urbanism. That is, dense villages, traditional aesthetics, stoops etc.
The lecture this Wednesday was markedly different. He began by acknowledging that we were an academic audience (he'd spoken a couple times earlier in the day to more political audiences) and said he therefore felt comfortable talking to us more about theory. (Now, I understand that he was using a tactic to endear us to him. He's something of a televangelist these days; a brilliant speaker who has obviously adjusted the way he speaks to people because of all of the intense criticism he's had to respond to over the years.)
His message is now much more oriented to sustainable development and what I think most of us would classify as smart growth. He spoke about the importance of strengthening existing urban neighborhoods, praised ideas like critical regionalism, accepted the value of contemporary aesthetics in architecture and (mostly) descried the existence of zoning laws that prevent the creation of New York City, which has the lowest per capita energy consumption in the nation.
So it seems his work is less related to architecture and style these days, but more on changing zoning laws, municipality by municipality. The "transect" is still central to his theories, and they're developing new zoning codes that use the transect.
I didn't think about this until later, but suspect that if he were pressed, he'd regret having created places like Seaside (isolated pockets of urbanism that don't have the benefit of regional connectivity and infrastructural efficiency).
WonderK, you were there too. Does this sound like an accurate representation of the lecture?
I'd be interested to hear what others think. Is New Urbanism still the devil of traditional design? Some say that the biggest criticism is that it's neither new nor urban (places like Seaside look a heckuva lot like Ebenezar Howard's Garden City schemes), but if we think of the "urbanism" theory has more related to his ideas for zoning etc, it really could be classified as "new", no?
i've never seen new urbanism as the devil. it is new urbanism precisely because it isn't new or urban.
archtopus, thanks for the extensive write-up and posting this (architecture discussion yay!). I admit I don't know what a transect is and will go google it now...
It's good to hear that he's thinking more about a larger view of "urbanism" than just one little town plan popped here and there all across the country. There are amazing challenges in existing urban conditions - for example, former factory cities like Flint, MI, and Binghamton NY, which some people think are beyond hope. Is he thinking of ways to solve those?
I'm off to google.
I think a move toward "smart growth " vs the new urbanism was inevitable; and I think that it's a good thing. The idea of creating a traditional architectural form doesn't really bother me, and I can appreciate the New Urbanisms typical focus on doing traditional architecture accurately w/ proper attention to detailing, etc.. . However, I do have a problem w/ a focus on traditional architecture that leaves no room for change, and contemporary design that is able to embrace sustainability in ways that traditional buildings might not. So, I think (aside from Duany...whether he's actually moving in this direction or not - which I have no reason to think he isn't) that I'm ok w/ saying that maybe we've moved beyond the New Urbanism all together: and using a term like Smart Growth might more accurately reflect the key points of the New urbanism that are worth holding onto - while embracing a mindset that allows for more environmentally proactive architecture.
Regarding the criticisms of the New Urbanism you mentioned: I don't really care if it isn't "new"...or if it's not entirely urban. I think there are key planning strategies in it that are good for community - and environmental sustainability. Those are two things that aren't coupled together in development strategy very often - that to me is very smart: I'm not saying it's perfect...of course it's not, but there are a lot of fantastic ideas that must be paid attention to that go far beyond its name, and traditional architecture.
zoning laws are very significant...i don't remember who said it but "architecture is politics"
Seaside was designed in 1979, which means its just around the corner from National Landmark eligiblity (a bit sobering to consider, I think). Its fair to say that New Urbanists have evolved from this point of departure, although most critics of New Urbanism don't manage to look past those 80 acres on the Florida panhandle.
Meanwhile, Duany and other self-proclaimed New Urbanists have definitely embraced "urbanism", and are responsible for re-writing the zoning codes in places like Miami, Chicago, Denver and Nashville as well as a host of smaller cities.
As for the Transect, it is the conceptual basis for almost all New Urbanist work, and is the answer to the critique that New Urbanism isn't urban. Essentially the Transect proposes is that there are a contintiuty and degrees of urbanism - some very big and intense (ie historic downtowns), some less so, some more suburban, some more rural, and some distinctly rural. The Transect suggests all zones of the city are mixed-use, its a just a question of intensity (and therefore it is an alternative to convential use-based zoning practice). What is often not understood, even by Duany's ardent followers, is that the Transect is a conceptual tool that must be calibrated to individual places - what is T6 (ie: downtown) and therefore T5-2 will look very different in Miami than in Battle Creek Michigan. Also, it doesn't have to be a continium - radical shifts of scale are possible (ie: going from T1 to T6, which more or less happens with NYC's Central Park).
The Transect has also become the organizing device for almost all of the New Urbanists' typological interests, and the means by which they get categorized. Thus certain building types, frontage types, roadway types, landscape types, park types, fence types, etc are appropriate in certain Transect zones, but not others (and generally, there will be a sliding scale by which types overlap). Check out the diagrams in the Article 6 of the Smart Code for an illustration.
Where you can fault this system of thought is by recognizing that the Transect only encompasses one axis. Most cities need at least two axes, if not a three-dimensional matrix of place types, to describe how they actually appear.
As for the term "New Urbanism"... the word "new" is a marketing and PR trope. No one would have paid attention to them if they called themselves the "old urbanists". In America, we only pay attention to things that are new.
i like where he is going with his lectures and writings, even if i still find the paternalistic aspect disturbing.
somehow i have to agree with koolhaas that urbanism and planing when put together seem a kind of mis-appropriation or mis-match of ideas; simply because the urban world is not only ungoverned but ungovernable...we will never get what we want, no matter how hard we plan and how restrictive (or open) the covenants...and perhaps things work better that way any way.
that duany and calthorpe are beginning to take on this idea too is i think very interesting...the transect and form-based zoning are both a kind of attempt to keep things open so urban/rural/suburban forms can change over time...
because these guys really are trying to practice what they preach in real offices there is an integration of reality into the dogma that is leading to rather interesting things with their versions of the NU movement...which is a good thing. It makes things much more robust. And is a very nice antidote to Kunstler...
Then again i still find the NU planning to be too graphic design-ish when applied. maybe this is another version of the criticism that NU lacks dimensionality that m. loomis has brought up... it is nonetheless moving in interesting directions...very nice to see that even polemicists are not all hard-boiled prunes.
Duany's a total televangelist, I saw him speak a few years ago and it was a borderline tent revival.
If he's seriously not interested in aesthetics anymore then what's left? Smart Growth? We've already got a word for that. Strengthening existing town centers? You don't have to be 'New Urbanist' to be interested in these things.
It sounds to me like he's totally toning down the traditional aesthetics thing b/c that's what NU takes flak for in an academic environment, and it kind of reveals the bankrupcy of the NU position in general: focus on form is silly and distracting at best, disingenuous at worst, but if you take that away then there are other movements that already do the same things that the NU true believers say they want to do, and without the ridiculous aesthetic baggage.
NUs conflation of the superficial and the operational, their mixup between what cities look like and how they work, continues to do serious damage. This kind of deliberate switch up between form and substance is bad planning and it slides right into bad politics.
the aesthetic seems ridiculous to all except the users. i live in an old urbanism area. a mix of turn of the century houses, town homes, multistory apartment buildings churches etc. any new construction must go through a historic planning commission and the neighborhood association. a free monthly magazine, the urban times, gives the downtown lowdown on Indy's historic neighborhoods. each neighborhood posts the activity that is going on within its fiefdom, ranging from spring cleanups to flea markets to new construction. often designs are rejected or forced to change because they do not meet the aesthetics of the neighborhood. of course, the once esplanaded streets that run through this neighborhood were torn out and replaced with pavement effectively putting my crib between a two one way freeways that serve the suburbnites at the neighborhood's expense. a real potential for a return to old urbanism may get rolling on that soon.
I know, people like historicism, even when it's fake. And they'll ignore the real problems, like those freeways, as long as they get their columns and cornices.
It's depressing. It's really depressing.
well, the freeways were the old new urbanism. the neighborhood groups are the ones addressing the problems. its grassroots.
it may not be the histor-icky details that the old urban neighborhoods love but the un-forced, un-self-conscious, but much smarter thinking that went into a lot of what we still have in the old neighborhoods. when new work is as smart, it often doesn't matter if it has cornice, columns, or not.
to all those who love to hate seaside, i always just remember that holl was one of the first architects of commercial space there. his building was both modern and smart (if poorly detailed) and it fit into that environment just fine.
2 things:
1) Currently in the process of reading Duany's 'Suburban Nation' (an excellent book in my opinion), I can easily understand archtopus' argument about New Urbanism. Having just spent the last semester focusing on urban design in my 4th-year studio, I can't stop thinking about things like sprawl and the decimation of rural countryside (I'm from Vermont) which makes me incredibly nauseous (see Williston, VT). My dilemma is that, like with reading Christopher Alexander's 'A New Theory of Urban Design,' I'm struggling with what the solution is. Before I'm jumped all over for just proposing that there's a one-stop shop solution (I'm not don't worry), I should just clarify that when I say solution, I merely mean steps really, to enhance our urban environment. Like with Alexander and Duany, I agree completely with their research and observations, but begin to get a bit apprehensive when I start reading their "rules" or "guidelines." You cannot just attempt to replicate the past (does "Middle Ages" ring a bell). Let's work to develop urban design strategies which DO make use of the successful strategies of the past which the New Urbanists have so intensely examined, BUT also make use of the vast amount of technology we have at our disposal. Let's look strongly at sustainable methods of development which will improve not only our quality of life, but our planet's. Our civilization stems from the minds which prosper in the city, and simply replicating the past doesn't move us forward does it? Who wants to live in a simulacrum like Disney World?
2) Last Fall in my Urban Design + Planning class, aptly named "The City," we spent the semester doing a transect study of Boston which you all are welcome to check out. As always, comments and criticisms are welcome.
CitySection.org
frankly, i think if you did a random poll, well over half of the respondents would want to live in disney world. That's the disconnect between the "educated" design world and the general population. nostalgia not progress is the overriding myth that people and not just white suburban people look for. the nostalgiamyth exists for new immigrants as much as it does for my mother. it just may take a generation for it to trickle down to a reality.
I'm sure it would be more like 80%. That's what I'm saying. It's depressing.
NU made a huge mistake in trying to tap into this nostalgia BS, and tying all that up with some decent observations about how cities should work. They can't go back on that.
Now people think they're getting good planning when they're just getting the superficial trappings. It's a total shell game. Keep the symbols, swap out the substance.
Front porches are great, but you don't need plastic ionic columns to have a usable front porch. But if you give someone the columns, along with an unusable porch that's only three feet deep, if they're in that 80%, chances are they'll be happy with that. And this is partly because of jokers like Duany playing politics and nostalgia games.
Are you saying that's okay because they're the majority and we're a bunch of disconnected "educated" (nice quotes) designers?
That's interesting that you bring up Disney World, vado. I've had a theory (that of course I haven't been able to test) that those who live in walkable urban areas are less prone to vacation at Disney World. If one of the amusement park's primary values is to let people experience the fun of an urban environment, why would those who experience one daily bother to vacation there? Perhaps the popularity of Disney World indicates an underlying desire for suburbanites to experience that which they lack.
Hi archtopus!
Yeah, I think you represented the lecture really well. I did mention this in the green thread, and I kind of steered my synopsis towards "what did his lecture have to do with sustainability". I have a couple of comments:
1) I really like the whole transect thing. It breaks down city planning into workable diagrams that make sense. And I understand how it is helpful for "quick planning", as he was advocating, since one of his major points in this talk was how city and town governments don't have the money to put together full fledged planning studies, and how creating zoning codes can be "quick and dirty" but still effective.
2) While I respect the fact that NYC has the lowest per capita energy consumption in the nation, I disagree with the idea that we should "leave it alone", as Duany proposed. Just because it's "lowest per capita", that doesn't mean that it doesn't use enormous amounts of energy, and could do better to incorporate more renewable energy strategies. Do I want a big wind turbine on the top of the Chrysler Building? No, that's dumb. But I don't think any place should be exempt from "smart growth" initiatives.....
The CNU has been sleeping with the USGBC and spawned LEED-ND. The only blatantly historicist credits (I'm looking at the september 2005 draft -memo to self, get the latest version!) is 'applying regional precedents in urbanism and architecture'. this can be interpreted as smart growth, but IMO many regional precedents and vernacular types of buildings/urban fabrics in the US are not worth repeating or invoking as good/sustainable design. there are exceptions, but those are rarer then the CNU states.
The entire category of 'compact, complete & connected neighborhoods' transcends the CNU creed- other influences including the late jane jacobs and many other visionaries have espoused alternatives to the euclidian monocultures of suburban cul desacs and commercial strips. Even corb and wright had interesting mixed use ideas mixed in with their utoipian urbs.
for those not sitting with LEED-ND on their minds, here are all the other credits from the 2005 draft (now being tested in pilot projects):
Location Efficiency - 30 points
(renamed for the pilot version: smart location and linkages)
Prerequisite: Transportation Efficiency
Prerequisite: Water and Stormwater Infrastructure Efficiency
Credit: Contaminated Brownfields Redevelopment
Credit: High Cost Contaminated Brownfields Redevelopment
Credit: Adjacent, Infill or Previously Developed Sites
Credit: Reduced Automobile Dependence
Credit: Contribution to Jobs-Housing Balance
Credit: School Proximity
Credit: Access to Public Spaces
Environmental Preservation
(not included in the pilot rating system)
Prerequisite: Imperiled Species and Ecological Communities
Prerequisite: Parkland Preservation
Prerequisite: Wetland & Water Body Protection
Prerequisite: Erosion & Sedimentation Control
Prerequisite: Farmland Preservation
Credit: Support Off-Site Land Conservation
Credit: Site Design for Habitat or Wetland Conservation
Credit: Restoration of Habitat or Wetlands
Credit: Conservation Management of Habitat or Wetlands
Credit: Steep Slope Preservation
Credit: Minimize Site Disturbance During Construction
Credit: Minimize Site Disturbance Through Site Design
Credit: Maintain Stormwater Runoff Rates
Credit: Reduce Stormwater Runoff Rates
Credit: Stormwater Treatment
Credit: Outdoor Hazardous Waste Pollution Prevention
Compact, Complete & Connected Neighborhoods - 39 points
(neighborhood pattern and design)
Prerequisite: Open Community
Prerequisite: Compact Development
Prerequisite: Diversity of Uses
Credit: Compact Development
Credit: Transit-Oriented Compactness
Credit: Diversity of Uses
Credit: Housing Diversity
Credit: Affordable Rental Housing
Credit: Affordable For-Sale Housing
Credit: Reduced Parking Footprint
Credit: Community Outreach and Involvement
Credit: Block Perimeter
Credit: Locating Buildings to Shape Walkable Streets
Credit: Designing Building Access to Shape Walkable Streets
Credit: Designing Buildings to Shape Walkable Streets
Credit: Comprehensively Designed Walkable Streets
Credit: Street Network
Credit: Pedestrian Network
Credit: Maximize Pedestrian Safety and Comfort
Credit: Superior Pedestrian Experience
Credit: Applying Regional Precedents in Urbanism and Architecture
Credit: Transit Subsidy
Credit: Transit Amenities
Credit: Access to Nearby Communities
Credit: Adaptive Reuse of Historic Buildings
Resource Efficiency - 31 points
(green construction and technology)
Credit: Certified Green Building
Credit: Energy Efficiency in Buildings
Credit: Water Efficiency in Buildings
Credit: Heat Island Reduction
Credit: Infrastructure Energy Efficiency
Credit: On-Site Power Generation
Credit: On-Site Renewable Energy Sources
Credit: Efficient Irrigation p
Credit: Greywater & Stormwater Reuse
Credit: Wastewater Management
Credit: Reuse of Materials
Credit: Recycled Content
Credit: Regionally Provided Materials
Credit: Construction Waste Management
Credit: Comprehensive Waste Management
Credit: Light Pollution Reduction
Credit: Contaminant Reduction in Brownfields Remediation
the LEED-ND pilot guidelines can be downloaded as a PDF here. the pdf prohibits copying and pasting so I couldn't easily post the final credits...
i'm not saying it's okay or unokay.i'm just calling it like i see it. i don't see how you can blame new urbanism for cheap construction materials. cheap construction materials go on the most expensive houses these days.
Now that labor costs are higher than they were a few centuries ago, nobody can afford to pay a stoncarver to make their ionic capitals. So if you like that sort of thing you're only gonna be able to find it in molded plastic.
So yeah, New Urbanism, as an ideology that promotes the use of empty symbols beyond their technological or cultural relevance is to blame for their proliferation and persistence in cheap, fake materials.
I don't see those as empty symbols at all. what symbols of home are there? shipping containers? villa savoiye. for us maybe, but not for others. i guess architecture students need to go on an equivalent of a lds mission and hit the suburbs to preach the gospel of "good" design.
ironically, isn't the new urbanism just another form of modernist master planning? both in terms of the aims of the transect to the marker colorful city plans coming out of duany's and calthorpe's offices, the new urbanism is essentially attempting to give a comprehensive rational order to the city. without question it is offering a new dogma (anti-automobile, mixed use, etc.), but isn't it plain to see by now that changing the zoning code is still playing the same game we've been playing for the last eighty years? in my view, there is something fundamentally wrong with the approach. it's not the plan that needs to change, but the way we plan.
that is a good point jafidler, and likely one that duany et al would agree with.
i wouldn't say new urbanism is modernist. more close to howard than team X, really. if you mean to conflate modernism with dogmatic aesthetic concerns...maybe. but even corbu repudiated his early versions of the city radiant by the end of his career (or so i recall reading somewhere)...
i don't think the transect or form-based zoning are at all the same old shit. they are in many ways quite radical. the form-based zoning could in fact become something akin to performance based zoning, where the local citizenry decide what functions can exist in their area (chicago used to be based on this system)...this opens up a new can of worms however.
about disney...disney land and disney sea are both an hour from my house and we go often enough cuz of the kids that i am nearly sick of them...the urbanism at disney sea is based on northern italian cities, including a replica of venice, with gondolas and the whole lark...it is actually quite nice...but i don't want to live there.
To be honest while i LOVED milano (the real place, not the disney version) as a place to hang out and visit i know i couldn't stand living there either. The place really felt to me like a tomb. a lovely tomb, but still quite finished off in a sad way. Disney is ok because it is clearly a product and not a place to live, but if it WERE, I would probably end up not going there so much either...
still i think vado's observations are pretty much correct. the modern city is not to blame for the modern world, but a product of it...
jump - As an organization, the CNU is deliberately and consciously modeled after CIAM and TeamX (surprisingly, the TeamX members are revered by some of the leading NUists, and Giancarlo de Carlo was given an award at CNU10 or 11). The CNU, however, is up to its 15th meeting, and you will recall that CIAM10 was dissovled and superseded by TeamX. I've been waiting for the CNU's version of TeamX to emerge for 5 years now... On the other hand, your suggestion the CNU learns more from Eb Howard is also correct - definitely in terms of form and diagram, the CNU obviously prefers Howard to Hilbiseimer or Corbusier.
There are a few provocative comments in this discussion that I would like to hear elaborated, because I think they get at the core of the CNU agenda:
from jafidler - "it's not the plan that needs to change, but the way we plan" I take your critique to mean that any type of planning that relies on zoning (whether use or form, or transect-based) is suspect. But I'm not sure Houston is a such a great model.
from sevensixfive - "NUs conflation of the superficial and the operational, their mixup between what cities look like and how they work, continues to do serious damage. This kind of deliberate switch up between form and substance is bad planning and it slides right into bad politics." My suggestion is that the CNU began with form / superficial (ie front porches) and has slowly moved towards the operational - that is, while they learned to understand the operational, the CNU emphasized the consequences of what was in fact important to them (front porches or not important per se, but the operational mode of relating to the street). In my observation, the CNU has become much more concerned with substance than form in the past few years. That said, politics is as much form as substance.
certainly in terms of appearances and aspirations i would associate the CNU with howard, but in terms of a prescribed formula to achieve a better city it is without question in the modernist tradition, i.e. a utopian endeavor. my issue with the CNU is that its formula is neither reactive nor speculative. in a world marked by change fixed plans and formulaic responses are too detached from the immediate (and impending) circumstances that comprise urban form. part of the difficulty that duany is having in new orleans is that the magnitude of the design challenges he is facing is far more complex than the simple formula he has been prescribing for the the last 25 years.
howard is not utopian, or prescriptive? i see no difference on that level between howard, the modernists, or, for that matter the original christian fundamentalists who first invented and built suburbia...
duany is also facing problems associated with his inevitably elitist line of work...it is hard to be inclusive when your masters are exclusive, and always have been...in that sense at least NU is being finally tested on the moral grounds it has always preached and never lived up to...pity that it so far is not very succesful on that end...
i am currently writing a phd based on an opposing stance to NU, but i nonetheless believe the form-based zoning has the potential to be very reactive and is not as formulaic as the graphic plans might lead one to believe...
on other hand, urbanism is always behind the times. it cannot help but be so. it almost feels like you are looking for a better formula, not a change in perception (one in which a priori knowledge is no longer considered?)....
the problems duany is facing in new orleans are social, technological, economic, ecological, political, you name it. it's not an easy problem for anyone, but even more so, for people with preconceived ideas about what a city should be.
in another thread, jump, you were making the case that typical planning and urban design principles don't apply in places like shanghai and hong kong. that struck a chord with me. i've spent some time in india, and really can't imagine applying standardized planning formula anywhere in that country. urban form is generated by too many wildly inconsistent variables. we can try to understand those variables in an attempt to "plan" or at best anticipate future urban forms, but to stipulate "mixed-use" or "walkable" or even zone such a place seems almost laughable. maybe the new urbanists can learn something from mumbai and hong kong.
maybe it's time for eco-urbanists to take over. Anybody want to join?
alan -
i don't think that the roots of n.u., at least as dpz shaped it, were rooted in that of dialectic between form/operation. their interest has almost always been in the operational - form is simply a means to an end. they've willingly used imagery (which, let's be honest, is almost always client driven) as propaganda in advancing the structural changes.
point in case: as someone who grew up literally next door to seaside, if you look at the houses as they were developed over time (which occurs roughly east to west across the development), they change from the relatively simple riffs on a 'beach vernacular' common to the area (see the walter chatham, deborah berke, victoria casasco, holl, and anthony ames projects in particular) and duany actively sought out more 'modern' ny/yale axis architects to promote to potential homebuyers. also, the homes tended to be much more modest in size and detailing and were built as vacation homes. what happens over time, though, is that as the development becomes more successful, the economic dynamics change - the land becomes much more valuable, investors move in, houses get larger and more ornate, and by the time the thing fills out, modesty on the architect's part tends to be chucked out the window. even mockbee's project is largely neutered from the original design (which included flying rebar as the grillage on the porch areas). is this duany's fault? i'd argue not. is seaside much better than what the 'norm' was for development down that way? absolutely and without question.
i don't think duany has held out seaside (or any of their early projects) as the answer to all that ails urbanism - it is an alternative, one of hopefully many. my take is that very few 'modern' urbanists have come up with compelling alternatives, which makes n.u. just that much bigger of a target.
if you can get past the aesthetic requirements (which dpz largely does not impose, except when requested by the client - and when they do, they try to 'play by the book' to make sure that the traditional character is not absolutely butchered), their concepts are pretty sophisticated and certainly could be taken, manipulated by aesthetics and coding, and derive a very vibrant kind of urbanism that becomes decoupled from any specific visual agenda. no one has really taken them up on it, though....
This is one of several passages worth quoting from the [url=http://www.cnu.org/charter
]Charter of the Congress for the New Urbanism[/url]
"urban places should be framed by architecture and landscape design that celebrate local history, climate, ecology, and building practice."
The problem is that climate, ecology and building practice are all much more quantifiable than history, local or otherwise. And local historical reference is too often tied to outdated building practice (that's that plastic ionic column) so the one conflicts with the other.
Climate and ecology are also relatively stable (we'll see). Building practice, being tied to technology, is not. And the stability of historical reference is pretty suspect too. You could make the usual linguistic arguments to support that instability, but I think it's more relevant to cite the mind numbing effects of nostalgia and the tendency people have to accept symbols over substance as referenced above. Like I said, that makes it too easy for an NU agenda to interlock with bad politics. Sell the sizzle not the steak.
So yeah, I think this runs through the agenda and founding documents of the CNU, whether they're trying to disown it now or not. To say 'that's what the clients want' is not really a valid argument. Plenty of clients wanted sprawl, too.
I'm with Barry: try an Eco-Urban thing, it's what you get when toss out the historicist BS, and use economic metrics to track the effectiveness of building practice. If NU is about history, climate, ecology, and building practice, then once you lose the history, let practice adapt, and keep a sharp eye on the weather, what you're left with ain't New Urbanism anymore.
Bugger all.
Here's the link.
i agree with you jafidler.
there is a tendency by some planners to make decisions or present them dogmatically, refusing all kinds of possibilities in the name of their true way...it becomes apparent once we start looking at alternative urban forms in the middle east and the far east, which work in all kinds of different ways from what we are used to in north america and even europe...i don't know if one is better than another (i somehow doubt itbut there are definitley wasted opportunities as a result.
still it is i think easy to go the other way and simply assume NU is fundamentally flawed and has nothing to add. I dont think that is the case either, and i am deeply impressed with the devotion and energy that duany and calthorpe and the rest of the new urbanist crowd have put into their project to get something different built, whether I "like" it or not...
I can think of few architects who have been as consistent or as determined...and frankly i can think of few architects who are as willing to adapt their strategies to reality as it comes up. There is none of the "starving misunderstood artist" thing going on...and remarkably they are still moving their agenda forward, changing it as they learn and adapting it to the politically possible. That they can do that and STILL have an abstract theoretical approach (other than mere acceptance of reality) is very very impressive.
re: the nostalgiamyth
vado:
"frankly, i think if you did a random poll, well over half of the respondents would want to live in disney world. That's the disconnect between the "educated" design world and the general population. nostalgia not progress is the overriding myth that people and not just white suburban people look for. the nostalgiamyth exists for new immigrants as much as it does for my mother. it just may take a generation for it to trickle down to a reality."
i think vado makes a point here... where does NU's historicist / regionalist tendency come from? where does the nostalgiamyth come from? is new urbanism in part driven by a desire to deal with the lack of real public space / public life in america?
charles moore, [urlhttp://www.amazon.com/You-Have-Pay-Public-Life/dp/0262133733]'you have to pay for the public life', etc.[/url] talks about people's fascination with disneyland, and the re-creation of "the american main street", the idea of public space that really doesn't exist anymore in suburban or big city america but that people can pay money for... public something that we pay for, public privatized... nowadays, streets are not really public space in the tradition sense (from the greeks, etc.)... public is supposed to be: the common shared space of political action that is owned by everyone... the point being that, in america, what people think of as public is sometimes not really public... it's the space of automobiles, it's not the space owned by everybody its the space owned by nobody...
I wonder if, that nostalgiamyth exists for immigrants, and for our mothers each because they have a real memory of that type of public space, community... it still exists in other cities outside of north america, that pedestrian type of community... or maybe in the not so distant past in small town america, etc.
The problem is, that doesn't exist in america, it's very real that we live in the "automobile nation", the land of capitalism, industry driven and energy / oil driven society... "client/market serving" sometimes simply reinforces the status quo, whether it's political or design...
It would seem that making things better-- for community and environment-- needs to work within the american context. its the space of the market. given the billions of dollars invested in automobile infrastructure and in energy, etc. cities that work based on those assumptions, how do you create incentives for healthier, more sustainable living? I think what this boils down to, sustainable urbanism, community, etc. is public space. Public space isn't just about parks, it's about a different idea about urban living, its sustainable, pedestrian driven, about degrees of density... something that the new urbanists are trying to address...
I think there is something to be said for working with the market, structuring tradeoffs for developers to generate public space... working within the market, creating zoning approaches that give incentive to pay attention to public spaces... Making public space economically sustainable, tying public to rent value of a property... creating symbiotic relationships between public space and commercial spaces...
brink - i think i agree w/ you when you said "i think what this boils down to, sustainable urbanism, community, etc.. is public space." i think that is a key point of the New Urbanism that really should not go unnoticed (although it often does - which i find remarkable). people spend so much time arguing over the architecture that they seem unable to see the significance and strength of nu's focus on the city - community - public space ... which opens the door for sustainability, both socially and environmentally, that is fascinating.
so eco-urbanism? interesting idea - and will/should be a serious discussion in the years to come as sustainable buildings must be coupled w/ sustainable plans and designs for the city.
you mean the illusion of public space. most of the so-called public spaces are pseudo-townsquares in private developments; i find little difference here between the modernist plaza and new urbanist townsquare other than aesthetic differences. the ideal of public space in new urbanism is merely utopian.
i think that you're wrong when you say there is little difference between the modernist plaza, and the NU town square. there is an attention to what generates activity around the square that NU explores - that modernism never got around to. but, i'm willing to lay any support that i have for NU aside here because i think the critical point (public space) doesn't need a particular development strategy to gain importance. Attention to public space is crucial for community and ultimately genuine sustainability, but is often missing from how we plan our cities as a whole - regardless of how one thinks we should approach its design.
So, I guess this begs the questions: how can effectively designed public space effect communty and sustainability? Is this issue of public space central to healthy community and sustainability?
is public space really that crucial in this day and age? people are on thier cell phones on their laptops with their ipods in any public space that i enter. is the idea of public space a vestige of another time when people needed to come together for socialization and communal togetherness?
i would argue that an abundance of well designed public space allows for denser, and thus more sustainable, development... think of paris and other european cities for example... most of the housing stock there is very small in relation to the US... apartments have very little semi-public space in them (i.e. living rooms and family rooms in the american sense)... thus, there is a greater need for viable public spaces... i think this is contributing factor to the great street cafe culture... the cafe replaces the living room...
density is only sustainable if the sustainablity is designed into the density. viable public space is socioeconomic and cultural before it is architectural.
before discussing the merits of public space, i'm curious what people actually believe public space to be. the whole notion of public space has been so eroded by commodity, commercialization and private interests i'm not sure there's a definitive line. is the plaza in front of seagram public? i would say absolutely. is the sidewalk? sometimes. are parks? for the most part. is the public library? yes, thank goodness, perhaps one of the last few examples of truly public space. is a public museum public space if it costs $20 to get in? how about the subway? a shopping mall?
when duany or anyone else manufactures a townsquare in a manufactured city (or suburb as the case may be), i'm real hesitant to call it anymore public space than one of taubman's shopping malls.
interestingly enough this is a claim that has been picked out and tested by researchers...i can't recall their names at the moment but i have their papers somewhere on my machine...anyway, they were not able to say that new urbanism design led to better community, better commuting, or better anything at all really. Part of this was because New Urbanism communities are still rare enough to be filled with self selecting populations where results are likely skewed by non-typical residents...
but even with this self selection they mostly found that new urbanist communities led to no more community than elsewhere (as measured by surveys of neighbouring behaviour, as simple as greeting someone or helping with groceries and other indicators...). they did tend to have more people walking and as a result more casual meeting encounters, but nothing that could not be explained by the slef-selection issue above...so no powerful conclusions were possible.
Interestingly studies indicated INCREASED auto use in NU communities because the interconnectivity allowed more options for travel and thus more convenience/less congestion....but this too was not a large and powerful result...
i have not come across any credible research so far that suggests new urbanism actually meets its claims for community. at best the research says community MAY be encouraged...but also may not...
many articles indicate that many if not most of the goals of NU are not met by the planning...so far. One reason fo this (to pick the example of sustainability through less auto dependency) is because NU communities tend to be on the fringes and living in them invariably requires longer commutes for work, not shorter. The reason for this is that the economic/employment zones are not geographically limited in the way they were when old urbanism reigned king...When everyone works close to where they live NU makes sense, but when the employment cachement area is as large as a metrpolitan area (as is especially true for professionals) no amount of planning is going to lead to reduced auto-dependency. It can't, because society doesn't work in that manner anymore...anyway, the other claims, like improved community are similarly complicated and not amenable to resolution through paternalistic design-based solutions...
personally i think this means that there are issues with culture that need to be adressed through other means and not by design...This does not mean NU has no place, only that it is likely not the panacea we all hope for...
I think whoever said above that public space is socioeconomic and cultural before it is architectural has it dead right. I could list tons of modernist plaza that are super successful, take a look around Northern Europe sometime. There is no narrative of 'the failure of modernism' there because the public money that funded the maintenance and security of their public space never got cut like ours did. It's more a question of political will and culture than anything else.
I've also seen plenty of failed New Urbanist public space, a lot of it built via Hope VI, a HUD program to replace those hated (underfunded) tower-in-the-park public housing projects with cute little NU townhomes (that were then allowed to go to shit anyway once the photographers were gone).
And that classical European piazza 'cafe culture'? Try hanging out at one of those cafes when you're not constantly buying stuff, you'll see just how public it really is: 'Otra cafe con leche, por favor!'
I would agree that public space is first socioeconomic and cultural before it is architectural, but then, architecture can also be seen as both informed by and having an impact on socioeconomic and cultural concerns. Socioeconomic and cultural forces are contexts that can be read and engaged through architecture to foster the creation of a more pedestrian, sustainable, and more public urban space.
I agree, alot of the New Urbanist spaces might not really be effective public spaces... But I think one thing they understood was the contemporary north american context, something that is missing there that they could observe in old small town america or in other cultures, say europe... and they sought to deal with that context, whether their approach works or not is debatable...
A great book on this subject here: hannah arendt describes "the death of the public realm" in contemporary society... According to Arendt, that the public realm, what for centuries was that space of "freedom to speak" which had it's origins from the Greeks, no longer exists in contemporary society... In the past, "public" meant that you were "free", and "private" was basically the space of animal "labor"... That is, when you were in your private world, you were basically a servant in your home, whether it was cleaning or laboring to put food on your own table, struggling to survive... Basically, if you were dealing with your economics, you were a slave, animal labor, doing what it takes to survive... This is the origin of the meaning of public and private. What was "economy" was a private affair, it was everyone's own business, taking care of their own household... It was only once you were able to leave your home, enter the shared and open space of the city streets that you became a political individual, you had a voice, public was the space of "work", which is completely different from "labor". What's happened since the enlightenment and the industrial revolution and the division of labor is: that public realm has been displaced by what Arendt calls "the social realm"... This was new: the concept of "mass society" which, was the concern of politics. Suddenly, things are inverted: economy is now perceived as a political concern, the space of the city is now the space of economy, the space of labor, social sciences and global economy... And the home is now equipped with luxuries, security, conveniences and ammenities, that private space perceived as a bastion of safety against that threatening world outside... Public no longer existed, except maybe in the form of privatized public space...
Re: cellphones, internet, mobile communications, I think those are developing in part in response to the context, they are sort of damage control rather than the reason why we don't need public space... I mean, people need public space, but within the context of a lack of public space, a socioeconomic and cultural machine that doesn't generate real urban public space, virtual publics are one alternative... Not a very good one I think, there is still a big difference between virtual interaction and real life interactions...
Re: the european piazza... agreed, the piazza even in europe is somewhat commerce related, but I think in europe compared to america, public spaces still mean something a great deal more than a barren piece of purely formal urban space. Public certainly has to do with participation, how people take ownership of that space. In Rome for example, piazzas are alive at all times of the day, there are fountains, the types of daily performances, a market in the morning evolving into a bar scene, and an open concert or book sale at night... True there's money flow, but the difference is in the way people engage with the space... A stranger can feel at home there. Contrast that with many modernist plazas in America, they are rarely as successful, and there is always an issue of security and control... No loitering, no sitting down on the street, no consuming alcohol, no unofficial performances, no event without consent, no smoking within 25 feet of any doorway or space where people are working (labor)... So this so called "public space" is the space of "do no harm", basically it's the mentality that we've been ingrained with that it is NOT your property, you do not own it, you have not right to disturb it... You'll be fined for disturbing "public property"... Even in certain spaces designated for political action, designated spaces for legal protests etc., you need permission...
Given contemporary markets and economy, public space it seem MUST be economically sustainable first... Density is good for business.
sorry so many types of repetitive run on sentences... not sure if that made sense...
where's the edit button?
*typos*
jump, I'm not at all surprised that research would show the unsuccessful nature of most of the built "New Urbanist" development. And as I mentioned in the original post, I don't think Duany would be too surprised either. The original point of this thread was that building isolated dense communities is no longer the focus or intention of New Urbanist thinkers. They (at least Duany) are now more interested in making broad application of smart growth policies that encourage social diversity, environmental sustainability and infrastructural interconnectivity. The whole idea of the transect, to the extent that I understand it, is all about a continuum of urban space from intense urban to wilderness. In that system it would seem very counterintuitive to stick a T5 (fairly high density) in the middle of a T1 (wilderness).
as far as options of modes of transportation go, well i for one took a walk to the store to pick up a few items that could be easily carried. probably a two mile roundtrip jaunt. but then later i decided to drive to the video store. but before getting in the car i chatted with my neighbor and a friend of his outiside my building where they were kickin back with some hard lemonades. i got options baby.
where were they kicking back with hard lemonades? was it inside or outside your building? was it legal?
when you walked to the store, did you talk to anybody on the street? what kinds of activity or urban life or interaction did you see along the way? would you stop anywhere along the way and just chill out with other people there?
when you drove to the video store, were you renting a video to watch in the privacy of your own home?
there are places where you walk down the street and on an odd night there are movies projected on a wall in a public plaza and young people and old couples come out and gather and watch a movie or watch the football game (soccer)... or there might be open concerts. people walk around with drinks in hand all the time, stepping out of bars and walking into the next, or sitting in a public place drinking and chatting with people they just met... you will walk down the street and see a bunch of older retired men or women sitting on lawn chairs on the street in front of their homes chatting with their buddies. The streets feel safe because there are always people about... you feel secure because you're having a shared public experience with your neighbor, not just a passing view into another person's private activity...
if it wasnt a pleasant walk would i have taken it? nope.
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