"On the subject of landscaping, since you asked Larchinect -- I can't say I've studied this in NU communities, so my comment is only a general one rather than an informed one, but personally I find myself dismayed at the general lack of free, open, "rough" "natural" space left in this world. You don't have to have a baseball diamond or a flat square of grass with a tree border to have a "park". I'm so tired of us boxing out special little areas and calling them "parks" and then razing the terrain, planting them with drab plantings and scratchy grass, and pouring cement sidewalks all over the place. Where's the fun in that?"
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mantaray-
I agree wholeheartedly. I grew up in Maine. As you can imagine I playing in wild, natural areas as well.
There are plenty of landscape projects that imitate this well. Highly programmed parks on the other hand are typically just what they are. Theyre no tnecessarily places for wonderment and exploration, but baseball, sunbathing, frisbee, and dog-walking.
On the same note, there are a lot of unimaginative (or lawfully inhibited) landscape archs out there afraid to use their imagination or try something new.
I agree though that the NU communities I've seen and new development in general lacks good, true natural open space or parks.
Beloit Wisconsin is a member of The Main Street Program which is part of The National Historic Trust. The country has about 1900 communities which participate in the program. The MSP has a four point program which...
"The Main Street Approach is a community-driven, comprehensive methodology used to revitalize older, traditional business districts and the underlying premise is to encourage economic development within the context of historic preservation in ways appropriate to today’s marketplace. Main Street advocates the rebuilding of traditional commercial districts based on their unique assets: distinctive architecture, a pedestrian-friendly environment, personal service, local ownership, and a sense of community."-Beloit Downtown Website.
The four points include...Organization, Promotion, Design and Economic Restructuring.
The MSP also promotes a eight principles: comprehensive, incremental,self-help, partnerships, identfying existing assets, quality, change, implementation.
Larchinect, the reason is that you can sell a baseball diamond, but you can't sell unprogrammed open space (especially since uneducated people will show up at your sales meeting and freak out that criminals are going to hide out in them thar .5 acres of woods). If you're a developer trying to attract people to your brand spanking new "community", which are you going to build?
In my town, and I am not exaggerating one iota, this little ravine I'm talking about is quite literally the only undeveloped land left, and it is more or less inaccessible -- meanwhile there are probably at least ... hmm... well I can count at least 20 but that's only for half the town... maybe 30 or 40 baseball diamonds (not ones that are used by schools -- just separate "park" land) and I don't think I've ever seen them more than 50% used at any given time. Meanwhile there are no play spaces either -- just sports terrains as far as the eye can see. Guess you can't sell play structures either... why provide a play structure when everyone would rather just have their kids play in their private, fenced-in backyards? That way no parks dept. employee will get sued for some kid falling off the monkey bars, and no citizens can show up at planning meetings and freak that their kid is gonna get snatched from the playground.
This may sound overly cynical but you should read the comments in the local paper.
Landscape is inherently difficult to quantify. It's a shame because we could do some pretty awesome stuff if it weren't for all those damned degenerates looking for places to hide.
we're working on a school site right now which I am periodically asked to weigh in on the design for an hour or two every couple weeks. I've tried proposing 'learning landscape' elements like number games, mini-mazes, outdoor classroom, presentation spaces, glades, landform, and a science and fitness trail along with the typical four square, basketball, and tetherball on a slab of asphalt next to the play structure.
The budget is there and the architect seem into the ideas as far as I can see, but my boss seems insistent on being very conservative. I'm not sure if there are external costs or liability issues at stake that I'm unaware of, but he doesnt express this.
Anyway, that was a little rant, but my point is that public space does suffer as you stated. I think school sites may be the worse examples.
@manta, there's not a whole lot of study on it and it would be hard to get a planner to say i t on record...
But, supposedly, when a lot of places banned consuming alcoholic beverages in public places... crime rates actually increased.
This is a problem with the program of public parks in general-- they're rarely used by children while at the same time adults are prohibited, either legally or socially, from using those public spaces.
New Urbanism addresses this in part by "privatizing" public space making all sorts of loitering and destructive habits "legal."
Ideally, though, someone needs to address the idea that public spaces should not always be intended for small children and family cookouts.
I'm not totally following. I got the forst comment on alcohol in public.
"Ideally, though, someone needs to address the idea that public spaces should not always be intended for small children and family cookouts."
You know there are a lot of 'good' landscape architects out there working on this as we speak. I think.
I don't necessarily buy the idea of 'privatizing' public space. But I could agree if what you mean is imbue a 'sense of ownership.' Bottom line is we dont care about a lot of our public space in this country, including very large scale public space because frankly a lot of it isn't worth caring about, and thats our own fault. Now that kind of sounded like kunstler..
In the sense of a "privatized" public space, which many public spaces in new urbanism are not owned wholly by a public entity, means that public ordinances are no longer in effect or enforceable.
What this does is circumvent common law-- simply put, city or county politics no longer apply to new urbanist public spaces because they aren't entirely "public."
Essentially, whenever you step outside of your properties set back line... you make a social contract to uphold all of the laws in that contract. Like you agree to not be horribly shitfaced on the street or wear a thong. Otherwise, you get fines or taken to jail
But in New Urbanist schemes, the only public recourse available is for the property warning to tell the police to issue a trespass warning.
If it wasn't for overlay districts and public-private spaces, most sidewalk cafes in the US would be illegal as loitering, consuming alcohol in public and open container laws are still on the ordinance books across the US.
In this sense, New Urbanism solves the issue of defunct population micromanagement by simply circumventing those laws.
This is typically the same way that country clubs and golf courses function in providing accessible public space and can supply alcohol to patrons even in dry countries (though the technicality that dry county laws do not prevent the consumption of alcohol and giving away alcohol for "free" is technically not a sale).
In working in an office I would consider a sprawl facillitator I can clearly see the difference between development designed around public space and public space derived from the leftover bits.
I hate that new urbanism is guised as being anti-suburban when it is fact a remodelled suburban that relies on the existence of an urban centre. It also claims to be anti-cities which is just crazy. It tries to be a humble inbetween of cities and suburbia without the cars and traffic.
the problem it is facing is: it tries to replicate public space that exists in more traditional cities and communities, but it is operating in an environment that has a very different cultural and infrastructural context...
hannah arendt writes that "the public realm is dead"
traditionally, say from the greeks, "public" meant the space where you are free... where you have a political voice... "private" meant the space where you are a slave, subject to "labor" and "economy"... in other words, traditionally in the private realm in your home for example, you were subject to putting food on the table, doing labor in your house etc. the "public realm" on the other hand was the space outside of this economic space where you were free to speak and be heard "in public"... economics used to be a private business... now, "economics" has become a "public" matter, the concern of politics is economics...
now, with the industrial revolution, with the division of labor something has emerged: "the social realm" which has displaced the "public realm"... the idea of "mass society"... the emergence of the science of "economics"
now, in america, economics has become in the realm of "public acitivity"...
what used to be "public", the space *owned by everyone*, is now the space *owned by noone*... there is an emphasis on private property... people are confined to freedom in the privacy of their own homes, but publicity is dead... when you are out on the street, you are in the realm of the automobile for example, public property now means you are *not free* to speak or act... instead you cannot sit on a sidewalk or talk politics, or sleep under a bridge... it is not a space of political actors, it is not your property...
"public space" the space outside the home is now perceived as threatening, no longer a space of free action and speech but instead a dangerous place, requiring protection against the threatening world beyond the safety of the private household... surveilance cameras abound... this is an inversion of spaces...
instead, in america, people are private generally, and outside their homes they are a part of "mass society"... they have shifted to a focus on their own private spaces, the internalized spaces inside their privacy of their houses, filled their space with more and more ammenties and things within their houses... making it ever more comfortable and having less and less life outside of their homes
within that context, you cannot replicate the kind of public life you might observe in a more traditional community simply by building some open space... there is more to it than that... "open space" does not mean you have "public space"... public space is more about how people operate in that space, take ownership of the space, the lived in cultural space that exists not just the physical material of that space...
that said, new urbanism is trying to recreate public space. it is aiming for pedestrian space, removal of that space of automobiles, etc. and trying to create a site for public activity... actually, it is the right wing that is critical of new urbanism... seeing it as an attempt to overthrow the capitalist model... they think it is like socialism or some kind of communist ideal...
the reality is, not all new urbanist communities are successful, they fall short because despite their ideals, they are still subject to the new context of the "social realm"... they fail because they cannot change the fact that the political reality of our time... people operate in the private world and in the public world in a way that is different from the old world... people still work within a consumption culture, a culture of the private household, amassing wealth within the privacy of their own houses... you cannot change this by dressing up your house with classical forms... the nature of the home and the outside is different...
Looked at in another way, Charles Moore basically says that "the public realm has been privatized"... Public space is being recreated in places like Disneyland, main street is now something you have to pay admission for... They recreate a old world street within the context of a commercial theme park... "you have to pay for the public life"...
I think, new urbanism has good intentions, and in some places, say the Pearl District in Portland, the ideas are quite successful whereas in others, it fails because it missed the point... The idea of having pedestrian streets, mass transit, etc. is a good thing... It is just difficult to execute because the world has changed... Certainly, you cannot return to a traditional way of life through architectural style, but that is not what most new urbanists are advocating... It is more an urban ideal based on pedestrian cities... So, yeah I don't hate New Urbanism, I just think it's a broad thing, different proponents of have different ideas, and it hasn't always worked... Sometimes people fail because they confuse the issue with stylistic elements...
There is real public space in America, space that works well, landscapes... human landscape as well... Things like Olmstead's parks in Boston or Central Park for example... I'm all in favor of New Urbanist ideas of pedestrian cities... Bring in mass transit, boot the car out of cities and let people walk and take transit... Nowadays new urbanists are really trying to focus on sustainable urban living I think...
actually what hannah arendt says regarding the inversion is... whereas traditionally the private realm was the space of labor, now what we consider public space has become the space of labor... basically, people seek freedom within their homes, outside is where they are basically concerned with economics and labor... this is the difference between traditional spaces and our modern spaces... so... "the public realm" is dead...
not sure i fully agree with this, but this points to the problems that new urban is facing, why it cannot simply replicate a piazza for example and have created a public space... public space is about people and how they occupy it on a conceptual and lived in level, not just about the fact that there is a physical plaza plopped into the middle of the community for example...
I think real public life can happen, but it is evolutionary... requires a cultural shift...
I was thinking of Olmstead's parks in Boston as one of the few examples of "natural" (or at least, rugged rather than mannered) community parks I could think of.
re: your point about conservatives hating new urbanism --
That's very true and it's kind of funny, to me... they feel it's too controlling. This is a really unintentionally hilarious article to me, for example.
I agree for the most part with the last few posts, but there is one part of the issue which I think continues to be confused- Designers and urban planners for the most part do not control which projects go where.
I also don't see where NUists 'hate' cities.
I think the idea of conservatives hating NU because of the 'soci-cultural engineering' aspect is entirely believeable, but not just for conservatives. Certainly there are a lot of political undertones in all planning work.
bRink-
you make some brilliant points or at least shed light on some good literature on public space and privatization. I've often thought that it seems silly to me that if you look at all the places affluent Americans tend to vacation, ski resorts, tropical resorts, disney, etc..they all include a strong 'village' or public space component. Winter Park Ski Resort in Colorado for example just expanded their base village which is entirely pedestrian for maybe 1/8th and 1/4 of a mile. I'm confused about why we dont just build the places we live in this fashion if we cherish it so much.
There are parks in NYC other than Central Park, btw. These are really "public" spaces where people hang out, drink coffee, read, sleep on benches, smoke, dance, play, etc. Madison Square Park, Bryant Park, Union Square, Prospect Park (similar to Central Park in Brooklyn), McCarren Park) are all examples of this. The programming and design of public spaces should be appropriate to its surroundings and too often the programming for these public spaces doesn't add to or compliment its context. To claim that "all public space is private now" is not true. Maybe in some places, but not in NYC. NYC is a much different place than anywhere else in the US though. People in NYC already walk, take mass transit and live "locally". In the suburbs, there is no public space because the suburbs only provide large single use, parcels of land that can only be used as a destination. This is due to the transportation patterns (the automobile) and designing for the automobile. The lots are not the correct scale for pedestrian traffic either. For there to be public spaces in the suburbs, the spaces would have to be integrated into the daily path of the people who live there. The design of the suburbs killed public space. But in truly urban areas, public space is still alive and well (both on the streets and in the public spaces).
I don't know where you get New Urbanists are trying to get rid of the car and/or are communist/socialist. Modernists were communists (Bauhaus). Just because the execution of New Urbanist projects have been short-sighted, doesn't mean that there is something wrong with the concepts. They plan neighborhoods based on walkable distances that people will actually travel before they need to take some form of transit. It's completely logical and not political at all. Not to mention, if you base your assumptions on the existing projects, they all incorporate the car one way or another. The street is still the driving force that organizes the spaces and reinforces the order. In my opinion, New Urbanism hasn't shown enough creativity in translating their concepts, studies, etc into spaces. And in response, they have created their own expectations.
I'm not saying that public space doesn't exist... Yeah, I think there is successful public space in NYC... I agree, I think there are varying degrees of public activity in modern spaces in American cities.
But the point is: what defines public is that conceptual level of the space, the meaning it has as a place for performance. It is not about the physical material only. It is the lived in space that makes it public, how it operates, how people occupy it.
I'm not sure I fully agree, but I think what Arendt argues is that what is meant by "public" has changed from its traditional meaning... Politically and culturally there has been a shift.
I'm not saying that new urbanists are communist / socialist. This is just where some of their conservative critics are attacking it. Conservatives are not really logical... But there are different critics of New Urbanism coming from different points of view and political positions.
Yeah, there are some ideas that new urbanism advocates that I like... Pedestrian neighborhoods and mass transit.
Oh. I have never heard anyone say that before. I see. I thought it was an over-arching theory. On the whole, I agree. But, I guess it depends on where we're talking about and what the culture is in that place.
regarding getting rid of the car: it's not that they want to eliminate the car, but it's a different ideal for urban density that allows for more pedestrian movement and use for transit... there are different ideas, but i think it's the variation in density that matters, the concentration of cars to pedestrian traffic is distributed differently, more dense in the urban core, less car driven, more accessible to pedestrian traffic
The difficulty in that which I can see its that in places where new development is rampant you would need a'town center' every 1/4 mile, or transit station, which isnt going to happen where there is true sprawl. I would consider the notion that low density is as appropriate as higher density depending on the context. This isn't a urban site scale issue, but a regional planning issue, in which case I'd go out on a limb and say a lot of the regional planning being done in areas of rampant sprawl is 10+ years behind or totally politically charged.
The bottom line is 'choice' and variety' is good. The problem with suburban sprawl isn't the pattern itself, but the overabundance of a single pattern, which is inherently innefficient at the scale.
Yeah, in some places, say in Japan or in Hong Kong, transit actually leads to development, the patterns emerge around the transit nodes naturally, those stations naturally evolve into little cities...
I don't know... It might actually happen that if you had high speed rail connecting suburban communities, you might see density begin to develop around the transit lines due to the access to the connections...? I'm not a planner... But I sort of feel like rail lines are quite a bit different than highways... People don't want to live around highways because of the polution and noise, but rail lines don't seem to have that problem... Less cars makes areas actually seem more atractive to live in...?
Rail lines limit the number of stops for efficiently. The more stops you add to the train line there are, the slower the commute. There are also far fewer trains on rail lines than there are cars on highways. So, noise and the presence of the trains is not as constant as cars/highways.
I agree, but I'm not familiar with Japan's political/cultural history and structure enough to know how they implemented this.
I think, in the states, we need to mostly utilize what we've got, which isn't bad. There is an issue which I believe will inevitably work itself out in the coming years with regard to rail line rights. Right now, as I understand freight companies have a major issue with commuter rail on the same lines because they cause delays.
Ironically, the national highway system was implemented years ago with freight in mind and look at it today.
We're building around the wrong mode of transportation..obviously, but it isn't necessarily realistic in my very limited experience and knowledge to expect to build NEW regional commuter lines. At this point BRT (bus rapid transit) is probably the most effective solution there, but it's still the same priciples you mention.
First I think we need to rethink how we're concentrating communites and what the trade off is for each project. As Duany puts it (not that I'm necessarily subscribing to his tenets) and I'm paraphrasing- 'A fair trade in land use for a viable farm is a village..not a minimall..'
"The difficulty in that which I can see its that in places where new development is rampant you would need a'town center' every 1/4 mile, or transit station, which isnt going to happen where there is true sprawl."
As I understand the doctrine, it's transit stations separated by as much as one mile, with two zones around each station - higher intensity development within a 1/4th mile radius, usually on a semi-circle alnog the transit line, and somewhat lower intensity development within a 1/2 mile radius. Of course, given 1 mile distances between the stations, the ends of the two semi-circles will touch.
Check out how the various TODs the MTS Green Line in San Diego relate to one another, stradling the river, to see how well this works (or doesn't, if that's your perspective) in practice. Basically, start at the Old Town Transit Center, and follow the TODs eastward: Morena (TOD), Fashion Valley (mall), Hazard (TOD), Mission Valley (TOD), Rio Vista/Station Village (TOD), Fenton Parkway (future TOD), Stadium (Chargers' Stadium), then Mission (TOD) and Grantville (TOD). That's the only place in the world I can think of that's actually built a multi-TOD continuously new urbanist district encompassing, along a fixed-rail transit line, some 25,000 homes. Basically, it's all ugly postmodern stuff, but apparently people like it and do really use the transit, although I would not want try this in a non-radial city like LA. It only really works with strongly radial cities like San Diego.
Actually, if you compare Peter Calthorpe's original drawings from the 1980s of the Green Line TODs and how it actually looks like today on Google Earth, they basically built what he proposed, with the key exception that a TOD never emerged around the football stadium (because the City could never cut a deal with the Chargers). Some of the geometries are a little awkward, in practice, but the 1/4th mile and 1/2 mile rules were pretty religiously followed.
What seems to make this work is that the city's major retail malls are alog the Green line, with the big state university to the east (one stop east of Grantville) and the Old Town Transit Center, which connects to the Blue and Orange Lines going to Downtown and to Tijuana, plus about 1/2 the entire city's commercial office space, between Mission Valley and Downtown. Again, if this wasn't a radial city, it wouldn't have worked.
I agree and think the Green Line model works well, but what I'm sort of arguing 'against' is the comments earlier on regarding NU communities out in the middle of nowhere, like what is typical along the colorado front range. You need an existing rail or bus system to make a TOD, otherwise you're just doing dense sprawl. If you're not close to a major metro area the options are limited. SOmehow people still live in these places and there is a demand for homes even further east away from the highways, rail, and city.
If DPZ takes a project in this type of rural place, what else is there to do? They're not going to turn down the project. I think a lot of less experienced people like myself think we can invent our own projects and control all the political strings attached. In some very rare cases I think this is possible, but not likely.
it's regressive and semiotic. it is predicated on the assumption that the model of suburbia and the single family house is the ideal model and therefore does not invent or do anything new, just refinement of a settlement pattern that fractures social cohesion and promotes social striation, all the while (in most cases) making the car a requirement for inhabitation, only emphasizing these two consequences.
There are many kinds of New Urbanism with many kinds of masks and not all of them are designed by DPZ.
While DPZ is kind of assholish, they are one of the few firms that has actual "values" and sticks them. I know they have often turned down work and have often refused to participate in various things because of their adherence to their own principles they made up.
There are often conflicting examples of New Urbanism even within the same city.
Just like the "term" city, the term "New Urbanist" is ambiguous at best.
I think you could use the phrases "Neighborhood Master Planning" or "Town Development Coordination" as replaceable terms with "New Urbanist."
alucidwake:
"it is predicated on the assumption that the model of suburbia and the single family house is the ideal model
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Huh? I am not aware of any model of new urbanism that puts emphasis on single family homes. Not Krier, not Solomon, not Duany, not Calthorpe... in fact, nobody this side of the CNU.
I can't believe I'm defending new urbanism, but your statement is just manifestly wrong.
It is often disappointing. The general idea is good, though. It's the implementation that often mediocre or just downright garbage.
Of course, architects and urban planners haven't proposed anything better, so, instead of doing the lazy thing of offering empty criticism, create a better proposal, a better New Urbanism. It ill necessarily reconnect with tradition and traditional practices with adaptations made to contemporary needs. I.e., give us a better implementation of New Urbanism, or stop complaining. Nobody wants the trash you've been offering since WWII, i.e., horrid sprawl and subrubs, crappy developments with no regard for actual urban planning or quality of life and human needs and human nature, and Le Corbusier dystopia. Do better.
Swallow your egos and sit at the feet of tradition instead of trying to be rock stars. It's not about you. The most important people are those who will live there. You are supposed to be serving others, not profit or fame, certainly not at the expense of your dignity as an architect which hinges on your ability to prioritize the good of the other. There is much to learn from tradition. It is a collection of insights and practices smarter than you. Learn from them. Ignore the mediocre haters who will build yet another ugly McMansion or another grotesque deconstructionist travesty. Stop worshipping "newness" or yourself. It's not about you. Do what is right and what is good. Be noble, not a sniveling weasel. You'll sleep better for doing the moral thing.
Nov 11, 23 4:33 pm ·
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Non Sequitur
Tell us how you really think... gosh, such a garbage take on a complicated subject.
Nov 11, 23 4:59 pm ·
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troll bot
Nov 12, 23 5:35 pm ·
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Wood Guy
I look forward to the day that "do better" is retired from popular lexicon.
It is an interesting topic. After recently spending a few days in densely populated cities and villages in the south of France, I'm inspired to... do better. They have a ton of character, are clean, have good public transportation, and seem imminently more livable than the US cities where I've lived. Granted that only includes Boston, Seattle and Portland, Maine which all have their perks but they all promote and depend on sprawl.
“It’s not about you” you’re right. It’s not about me, it’s about maximizing ROI of the developer who *hires me* to do his crappy 5 over 1 while also meeting the local zoning requirements to “break up the massing” and providing more parking spaces than we should be building in a climate crisis.
Chad I can practically guarantee that you’re right!
Nov 14, 23 3:24 pm ·
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Almosthip
Hey Donna, the city of Edmonton has removed minimum parking stall requirements from their municipal bylaw and have placed that decision on the land owner to determine how many stalls they want to provide. They only require that a minimum number of barrier free stalls be provided. So you can see that some changes happening to help the planet.
^we have areas with zero parking requirement as per bylaw. Far more people are are pissed than happy about it because surprise surprise, people still buy cars even if their urban apartment provides no parking. Laughs from my 4 car long drive way in my 60y bungalow.
Where to begin.... How about artistic design integrity....nah too esoteric.... how about historical colonial references....nah requires basic understanding.... how about architecure is a service based industry....nah too practical....ok how about many things are outside of our control....nah too real world. I give up. You can't fix stupid.
why do you hate New Urbanism?
"On the subject of landscaping, since you asked Larchinect -- I can't say I've studied this in NU communities, so my comment is only a general one rather than an informed one, but personally I find myself dismayed at the general lack of free, open, "rough" "natural" space left in this world. You don't have to have a baseball diamond or a flat square of grass with a tree border to have a "park". I'm so tired of us boxing out special little areas and calling them "parks" and then razing the terrain, planting them with drab plantings and scratchy grass, and pouring cement sidewalks all over the place. Where's the fun in that?"
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mantaray-
I agree wholeheartedly. I grew up in Maine. As you can imagine I playing in wild, natural areas as well.
There are plenty of landscape projects that imitate this well. Highly programmed parks on the other hand are typically just what they are. Theyre no tnecessarily places for wonderment and exploration, but baseball, sunbathing, frisbee, and dog-walking.
On the same note, there are a lot of unimaginative (or lawfully inhibited) landscape archs out there afraid to use their imagination or try something new.
I agree though that the NU communities I've seen and new development in general lacks good, true natural open space or parks.
Beloit Wisconsin is a member of The Main Street Program which is part of The National Historic Trust. The country has about 1900 communities which participate in the program. The MSP has a four point program which...
"The Main Street Approach is a community-driven, comprehensive methodology used to revitalize older, traditional business districts and the underlying premise is to encourage economic development within the context of historic preservation in ways appropriate to today’s marketplace. Main Street advocates the rebuilding of traditional commercial districts based on their unique assets: distinctive architecture, a pedestrian-friendly environment, personal service, local ownership, and a sense of community."-Beloit Downtown Website.
The four points include...Organization, Promotion, Design and Economic Restructuring.
The MSP also promotes a eight principles: comprehensive, incremental,self-help, partnerships, identfying existing assets, quality, change, implementation.
Larchinect, the reason is that you can sell a baseball diamond, but you can't sell unprogrammed open space (especially since uneducated people will show up at your sales meeting and freak out that criminals are going to hide out in them thar .5 acres of woods). If you're a developer trying to attract people to your brand spanking new "community", which are you going to build?
In my town, and I am not exaggerating one iota, this little ravine I'm talking about is quite literally the only undeveloped land left, and it is more or less inaccessible -- meanwhile there are probably at least ... hmm... well I can count at least 20 but that's only for half the town... maybe 30 or 40 baseball diamonds (not ones that are used by schools -- just separate "park" land) and I don't think I've ever seen them more than 50% used at any given time. Meanwhile there are no play spaces either -- just sports terrains as far as the eye can see. Guess you can't sell play structures either... why provide a play structure when everyone would rather just have their kids play in their private, fenced-in backyards? That way no parks dept. employee will get sued for some kid falling off the monkey bars, and no citizens can show up at planning meetings and freak that their kid is gonna get snatched from the playground.
This may sound overly cynical but you should read the comments in the local paper.
manta-
YES YES YES.
Landscape is inherently difficult to quantify. It's a shame because we could do some pretty awesome stuff if it weren't for all those damned degenerates looking for places to hide.
manta-
are you an la?
we're working on a school site right now which I am periodically asked to weigh in on the design for an hour or two every couple weeks. I've tried proposing 'learning landscape' elements like number games, mini-mazes, outdoor classroom, presentation spaces, glades, landform, and a science and fitness trail along with the typical four square, basketball, and tetherball on a slab of asphalt next to the play structure.
The budget is there and the architect seem into the ideas as far as I can see, but my boss seems insistent on being very conservative. I'm not sure if there are external costs or liability issues at stake that I'm unaware of, but he doesnt express this.
Anyway, that was a little rant, but my point is that public space does suffer as you stated. I think school sites may be the worse examples.
sorry i'm at work typing quickly..
There's some much to say about this...
But I'll respond with the nearest thing first.
@manta, there's not a whole lot of study on it and it would be hard to get a planner to say i t on record...
But, supposedly, when a lot of places banned consuming alcoholic beverages in public places... crime rates actually increased.
This is a problem with the program of public parks in general-- they're rarely used by children while at the same time adults are prohibited, either legally or socially, from using those public spaces.
New Urbanism addresses this in part by "privatizing" public space making all sorts of loitering and destructive habits "legal."
Ideally, though, someone needs to address the idea that public spaces should not always be intended for small children and family cookouts.
orochi-
I'm not totally following. I got the forst comment on alcohol in public.
"Ideally, though, someone needs to address the idea that public spaces should not always be intended for small children and family cookouts."
You know there are a lot of 'good' landscape architects out there working on this as we speak. I think.
I don't necessarily buy the idea of 'privatizing' public space. But I could agree if what you mean is imbue a 'sense of ownership.' Bottom line is we dont care about a lot of our public space in this country, including very large scale public space because frankly a lot of it isn't worth caring about, and thats our own fault. Now that kind of sounded like kunstler..
In the sense of a "privatized" public space, which many public spaces in new urbanism are not owned wholly by a public entity, means that public ordinances are no longer in effect or enforceable.
What this does is circumvent common law-- simply put, city or county politics no longer apply to new urbanist public spaces because they aren't entirely "public."
Essentially, whenever you step outside of your properties set back line... you make a social contract to uphold all of the laws in that contract. Like you agree to not be horribly shitfaced on the street or wear a thong. Otherwise, you get fines or taken to jail
But in New Urbanist schemes, the only public recourse available is for the property warning to tell the police to issue a trespass warning.
If it wasn't for overlay districts and public-private spaces, most sidewalk cafes in the US would be illegal as loitering, consuming alcohol in public and open container laws are still on the ordinance books across the US.
In this sense, New Urbanism solves the issue of defunct population micromanagement by simply circumventing those laws.
This is typically the same way that country clubs and golf courses function in providing accessible public space and can supply alcohol to patrons even in dry countries (though the technicality that dry county laws do not prevent the consumption of alcohol and giving away alcohol for "free" is technically not a sale).
dry counties*
As a former student of New Urbanism, I found the following book very insightful. The author has several other great books as well.
http://www.amazon.com/How-Cities-Work-Suburbs-Sprawl/dp/0292752407/ref=pd_sim_b_5
So, is privatized public space conducive to 'organic' community development or is it just another machination of new urbanism, aka, dense sprawl?
In working in an office I would consider a sprawl facillitator I can clearly see the difference between development designed around public space and public space derived from the leftover bits.
I hate that new urbanism is guised as being anti-suburban when it is fact a remodelled suburban that relies on the existence of an urban centre. It also claims to be anti-cities which is just crazy. It tries to be a humble inbetween of cities and suburbia without the cars and traffic.
the problem it is facing is: it tries to replicate public space that exists in more traditional cities and communities, but it is operating in an environment that has a very different cultural and infrastructural context...
hannah arendt writes that "the public realm is dead"
traditionally, say from the greeks, "public" meant the space where you are free... where you have a political voice... "private" meant the space where you are a slave, subject to "labor" and "economy"... in other words, traditionally in the private realm in your home for example, you were subject to putting food on the table, doing labor in your house etc. the "public realm" on the other hand was the space outside of this economic space where you were free to speak and be heard "in public"... economics used to be a private business... now, "economics" has become a "public" matter, the concern of politics is economics...
now, with the industrial revolution, with the division of labor something has emerged: "the social realm" which has displaced the "public realm"... the idea of "mass society"... the emergence of the science of "economics"
now, in america, economics has become in the realm of "public acitivity"...
what used to be "public", the space *owned by everyone*, is now the space *owned by noone*... there is an emphasis on private property... people are confined to freedom in the privacy of their own homes, but publicity is dead... when you are out on the street, you are in the realm of the automobile for example, public property now means you are *not free* to speak or act... instead you cannot sit on a sidewalk or talk politics, or sleep under a bridge... it is not a space of political actors, it is not your property...
"public space" the space outside the home is now perceived as threatening, no longer a space of free action and speech but instead a dangerous place, requiring protection against the threatening world beyond the safety of the private household... surveilance cameras abound... this is an inversion of spaces...
instead, in america, people are private generally, and outside their homes they are a part of "mass society"... they have shifted to a focus on their own private spaces, the internalized spaces inside their privacy of their houses, filled their space with more and more ammenties and things within their houses... making it ever more comfortable and having less and less life outside of their homes
within that context, you cannot replicate the kind of public life you might observe in a more traditional community simply by building some open space... there is more to it than that... "open space" does not mean you have "public space"... public space is more about how people operate in that space, take ownership of the space, the lived in cultural space that exists not just the physical material of that space...
that said, new urbanism is trying to recreate public space. it is aiming for pedestrian space, removal of that space of automobiles, etc. and trying to create a site for public activity... actually, it is the right wing that is critical of new urbanism... seeing it as an attempt to overthrow the capitalist model... they think it is like socialism or some kind of communist ideal...
the reality is, not all new urbanist communities are successful, they fall short because despite their ideals, they are still subject to the new context of the "social realm"... they fail because they cannot change the fact that the political reality of our time... people operate in the private world and in the public world in a way that is different from the old world... people still work within a consumption culture, a culture of the private household, amassing wealth within the privacy of their own houses... you cannot change this by dressing up your house with classical forms... the nature of the home and the outside is different...
Looked at in another way, Charles Moore basically says that "the public realm has been privatized"... Public space is being recreated in places like Disneyland, main street is now something you have to pay admission for... They recreate a old world street within the context of a commercial theme park... "you have to pay for the public life"...
I think, new urbanism has good intentions, and in some places, say the Pearl District in Portland, the ideas are quite successful whereas in others, it fails because it missed the point... The idea of having pedestrian streets, mass transit, etc. is a good thing... It is just difficult to execute because the world has changed... Certainly, you cannot return to a traditional way of life through architectural style, but that is not what most new urbanists are advocating... It is more an urban ideal based on pedestrian cities... So, yeah I don't hate New Urbanism, I just think it's a broad thing, different proponents of have different ideas, and it hasn't always worked... Sometimes people fail because they confuse the issue with stylistic elements...
There is real public space in America, space that works well, landscapes... human landscape as well... Things like Olmstead's parks in Boston or Central Park for example... I'm all in favor of New Urbanist ideas of pedestrian cities... Bring in mass transit, boot the car out of cities and let people walk and take transit... Nowadays new urbanists are really trying to focus on sustainable urban living I think...
actually what hannah arendt says regarding the inversion is... whereas traditionally the private realm was the space of labor, now what we consider public space has become the space of labor... basically, people seek freedom within their homes, outside is where they are basically concerned with economics and labor... this is the difference between traditional spaces and our modern spaces... so... "the public realm" is dead...
not sure i fully agree with this, but this points to the problems that new urban is facing, why it cannot simply replicate a piazza for example and have created a public space... public space is about people and how they occupy it on a conceptual and lived in level, not just about the fact that there is a physical plaza plopped into the middle of the community for example...
I think real public life can happen, but it is evolutionary... requires a cultural shift...
I was thinking of Olmstead's parks in Boston as one of the few examples of "natural" (or at least, rugged rather than mannered) community parks I could think of.
re: your point about conservatives hating new urbanism --
That's very true and it's kind of funny, to me... they feel it's too controlling. This is a really unintentionally hilarious article to me, for example.
**Olmsted
I agree for the most part with the last few posts, but there is one part of the issue which I think continues to be confused- Designers and urban planners for the most part do not control which projects go where.
I also don't see where NUists 'hate' cities.
I think the idea of conservatives hating NU because of the 'soci-cultural engineering' aspect is entirely believeable, but not just for conservatives. Certainly there are a lot of political undertones in all planning work.
bRink-
you make some brilliant points or at least shed light on some good literature on public space and privatization. I've often thought that it seems silly to me that if you look at all the places affluent Americans tend to vacation, ski resorts, tropical resorts, disney, etc..they all include a strong 'village' or public space component. Winter Park Ski Resort in Colorado for example just expanded their base village which is entirely pedestrian for maybe 1/8th and 1/4 of a mile. I'm confused about why we dont just build the places we live in this fashion if we cherish it so much.
Kinda extreme, no?
There are parks in NYC other than Central Park, btw. These are really "public" spaces where people hang out, drink coffee, read, sleep on benches, smoke, dance, play, etc. Madison Square Park, Bryant Park, Union Square, Prospect Park (similar to Central Park in Brooklyn), McCarren Park) are all examples of this. The programming and design of public spaces should be appropriate to its surroundings and too often the programming for these public spaces doesn't add to or compliment its context. To claim that "all public space is private now" is not true. Maybe in some places, but not in NYC. NYC is a much different place than anywhere else in the US though. People in NYC already walk, take mass transit and live "locally". In the suburbs, there is no public space because the suburbs only provide large single use, parcels of land that can only be used as a destination. This is due to the transportation patterns (the automobile) and designing for the automobile. The lots are not the correct scale for pedestrian traffic either. For there to be public spaces in the suburbs, the spaces would have to be integrated into the daily path of the people who live there. The design of the suburbs killed public space. But in truly urban areas, public space is still alive and well (both on the streets and in the public spaces).
I don't know where you get New Urbanists are trying to get rid of the car and/or are communist/socialist. Modernists were communists (Bauhaus). Just because the execution of New Urbanist projects have been short-sighted, doesn't mean that there is something wrong with the concepts. They plan neighborhoods based on walkable distances that people will actually travel before they need to take some form of transit. It's completely logical and not political at all. Not to mention, if you base your assumptions on the existing projects, they all incorporate the car one way or another. The street is still the driving force that organizes the spaces and reinforces the order. In my opinion, New Urbanism hasn't shown enough creativity in translating their concepts, studies, etc into spaces. And in response, they have created their own expectations.
I'm not saying that public space doesn't exist... Yeah, I think there is successful public space in NYC... I agree, I think there are varying degrees of public activity in modern spaces in American cities.
But the point is: what defines public is that conceptual level of the space, the meaning it has as a place for performance. It is not about the physical material only. It is the lived in space that makes it public, how it operates, how people occupy it.
I'm not sure I fully agree, but I think what Arendt argues is that what is meant by "public" has changed from its traditional meaning... Politically and culturally there has been a shift.
I'm not saying that new urbanists are communist / socialist. This is just where some of their conservative critics are attacking it. Conservatives are not really logical... But there are different critics of New Urbanism coming from different points of view and political positions.
Yeah, there are some ideas that new urbanism advocates that I like... Pedestrian neighborhoods and mass transit.
Oh. I have never heard anyone say that before. I see. I thought it was an over-arching theory. On the whole, I agree. But, I guess it depends on where we're talking about and what the culture is in that place.
regarding getting rid of the car: it's not that they want to eliminate the car, but it's a different ideal for urban density that allows for more pedestrian movement and use for transit... there are different ideas, but i think it's the variation in density that matters, the concentration of cars to pedestrian traffic is distributed differently, more dense in the urban core, less car driven, more accessible to pedestrian traffic
bRink-
The difficulty in that which I can see its that in places where new development is rampant you would need a'town center' every 1/4 mile, or transit station, which isnt going to happen where there is true sprawl. I would consider the notion that low density is as appropriate as higher density depending on the context. This isn't a urban site scale issue, but a regional planning issue, in which case I'd go out on a limb and say a lot of the regional planning being done in areas of rampant sprawl is 10+ years behind or totally politically charged.
The bottom line is 'choice' and variety' is good. The problem with suburban sprawl isn't the pattern itself, but the overabundance of a single pattern, which is inherently innefficient at the scale.
Yeah, in some places, say in Japan or in Hong Kong, transit actually leads to development, the patterns emerge around the transit nodes naturally, those stations naturally evolve into little cities...
I don't know... It might actually happen that if you had high speed rail connecting suburban communities, you might see density begin to develop around the transit lines due to the access to the connections...? I'm not a planner... But I sort of feel like rail lines are quite a bit different than highways... People don't want to live around highways because of the polution and noise, but rail lines don't seem to have that problem... Less cars makes areas actually seem more atractive to live in...?
Rail lines limit the number of stops for efficiently. The more stops you add to the train line there are, the slower the commute. There are also far fewer trains on rail lines than there are cars on highways. So, noise and the presence of the trains is not as constant as cars/highways.
oops.....for "efficiency"! Not for "efficiently"......
I'm trying to type too fast.
bRink-
I agree, but I'm not familiar with Japan's political/cultural history and structure enough to know how they implemented this.
I think, in the states, we need to mostly utilize what we've got, which isn't bad. There is an issue which I believe will inevitably work itself out in the coming years with regard to rail line rights. Right now, as I understand freight companies have a major issue with commuter rail on the same lines because they cause delays.
Ironically, the national highway system was implemented years ago with freight in mind and look at it today.
We're building around the wrong mode of transportation..obviously, but it isn't necessarily realistic in my very limited experience and knowledge to expect to build NEW regional commuter lines. At this point BRT (bus rapid transit) is probably the most effective solution there, but it's still the same priciples you mention.
First I think we need to rethink how we're concentrating communites and what the trade off is for each project. As Duany puts it (not that I'm necessarily subscribing to his tenets) and I'm paraphrasing- 'A fair trade in land use for a viable farm is a village..not a minimall..'
For the most part I agree.
"The difficulty in that which I can see its that in places where new development is rampant you would need a'town center' every 1/4 mile, or transit station, which isnt going to happen where there is true sprawl."
As I understand the doctrine, it's transit stations separated by as much as one mile, with two zones around each station - higher intensity development within a 1/4th mile radius, usually on a semi-circle alnog the transit line, and somewhat lower intensity development within a 1/2 mile radius. Of course, given 1 mile distances between the stations, the ends of the two semi-circles will touch.
Check out how the various TODs the MTS Green Line in San Diego relate to one another, stradling the river, to see how well this works (or doesn't, if that's your perspective) in practice. Basically, start at the Old Town Transit Center, and follow the TODs eastward: Morena (TOD), Fashion Valley (mall), Hazard (TOD), Mission Valley (TOD), Rio Vista/Station Village (TOD), Fenton Parkway (future TOD), Stadium (Chargers' Stadium), then Mission (TOD) and Grantville (TOD). That's the only place in the world I can think of that's actually built a multi-TOD continuously new urbanist district encompassing, along a fixed-rail transit line, some 25,000 homes. Basically, it's all ugly postmodern stuff, but apparently people like it and do really use the transit, although I would not want try this in a non-radial city like LA. It only really works with strongly radial cities like San Diego.
Actually, if you compare Peter Calthorpe's original drawings from the 1980s of the Green Line TODs and how it actually looks like today on Google Earth, they basically built what he proposed, with the key exception that a TOD never emerged around the football stadium (because the City could never cut a deal with the Chargers). Some of the geometries are a little awkward, in practice, but the 1/4th mile and 1/2 mile rules were pretty religiously followed.
What seems to make this work is that the city's major retail malls are alog the Green line, with the big state university to the east (one stop east of Grantville) and the Old Town Transit Center, which connects to the Blue and Orange Lines going to Downtown and to Tijuana, plus about 1/2 the entire city's commercial office space, between Mission Valley and Downtown. Again, if this wasn't a radial city, it wouldn't have worked.
I agree and think the Green Line model works well, but what I'm sort of arguing 'against' is the comments earlier on regarding NU communities out in the middle of nowhere, like what is typical along the colorado front range. You need an existing rail or bus system to make a TOD, otherwise you're just doing dense sprawl. If you're not close to a major metro area the options are limited. SOmehow people still live in these places and there is a demand for homes even further east away from the highways, rail, and city.
If DPZ takes a project in this type of rural place, what else is there to do? They're not going to turn down the project. I think a lot of less experienced people like myself think we can invent our own projects and control all the political strings attached. In some very rare cases I think this is possible, but not likely.
without reading any of the responses:
it's regressive and semiotic. it is predicated on the assumption that the model of suburbia and the single family house is the ideal model and therefore does not invent or do anything new, just refinement of a settlement pattern that fractures social cohesion and promotes social striation, all the while (in most cases) making the car a requirement for inhabitation, only emphasizing these two consequences.
There are many kinds of New Urbanism with many kinds of masks and not all of them are designed by DPZ.
While DPZ is kind of assholish, they are one of the few firms that has actual "values" and sticks them. I know they have often turned down work and have often refused to participate in various things because of their adherence to their own principles they made up.
There are often conflicting examples of New Urbanism even within the same city.
Just like the "term" city, the term "New Urbanist" is ambiguous at best.
I think you could use the phrases "Neighborhood Master Planning" or "Town Development Coordination" as replaceable terms with "New Urbanist."
"without reading any of the responses:..."
________________
Thanks for that. Your thoughts are totally unique to this discussion. Do you have anything original to contribute?
alucidwake:
"it is predicated on the assumption that the model of suburbia and the single family house is the ideal model
------
Huh? I am not aware of any model of new urbanism that puts emphasis on single family homes. Not Krier, not Solomon, not Duany, not Calthorpe... in fact, nobody this side of the CNU.
I can't believe I'm defending new urbanism, but your statement is just manifestly wrong.
It is often disappointing. The general idea is good, though. It's the implementation that often mediocre or just downright garbage.
Of course, architects and urban planners haven't proposed anything better, so, instead of doing the lazy thing of offering empty criticism, create a better proposal, a better New Urbanism. It ill necessarily reconnect with tradition and traditional practices with adaptations made to contemporary needs. I.e., give us a better implementation of New Urbanism, or stop complaining. Nobody wants the trash you've been offering since WWII, i.e., horrid sprawl and subrubs, crappy developments with no regard for actual urban planning or quality of life and human needs and human nature, and Le Corbusier dystopia. Do better.
Swallow your egos and sit at the feet of tradition instead of trying to be rock stars. It's not about you. The most important people are those who will live there. You are supposed to be serving others, not profit or fame, certainly not at the expense of your dignity as an architect which hinges on your ability to prioritize the good of the other. There is much to learn from tradition. It is a collection of insights and practices smarter than you. Learn from them. Ignore the mediocre haters who will build yet another ugly McMansion or another grotesque deconstructionist travesty. Stop worshipping "newness" or yourself. It's not about you. Do what is right and what is good. Be noble, not a sniveling weasel. You'll sleep better for doing the moral thing.
Tell us how you really think... gosh, such a garbage take on a complicated subject.
troll bot
I look forward to the day that "do better" is retired from popular lexicon.
It is an interesting topic. After recently spending a few days in densely populated cities and villages in the south of France, I'm inspired to... do better. They have a ton of character, are clean, have good public transportation, and seem imminently more livable than the US cities where I've lived. Granted that only includes Boston, Seattle and Portland, Maine which all have their perks but they all promote and depend on sprawl.
“It’s not about you” you’re right. It’s not about me, it’s about maximizing ROI of the developer who *hires me* to do his crappy 5 over 1 while also meeting the local zoning requirements to “break up the massing” and providing more parking spaces than we should be building in a climate crisis.
oktavianzamoyski's post make me think that he/she has never practiced architecture before.
Chad I can practically guarantee that you’re right!
Hey Donna, the city of Edmonton has removed minimum parking stall requirements from their municipal bylaw and have placed that decision on the land owner to determine how many stalls they want to provide. They only require that a minimum number of barrier free stalls be provided. So you can see that some changes happening to help the planet.
^we have areas with zero parking requirement as per bylaw. Far more people are are pissed than happy about it because surprise surprise, people still buy cars even if their urban apartment provides no parking. Laughs from my 4 car long drive way in my 60y bungalow.
Where to begin.... How about artistic design integrity....nah too esoteric.... how about historical colonial references....nah requires basic understanding.... how about architecure is a service based industry....nah too practical....ok how about many things are outside of our control....nah too real world. I give up. You can't fix stupid.
On the off chance this is a real person that is.
Nah no one can be this ignorant.
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