Planning the Good Community

New Urbanism in Theory and Practice

Jill Grant

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2005
• ISBN:
  9781135994433
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture General

An examination of new urban approaches both in theory and in practice. Taking a critical look at how new urbanism has lived up to its ideals, the author asks whether new urban approaches offer a viable path to creating good communities.

With examples drawn principally from North America, Europe and Japan, Planning the Good Community explores new urban approaches in a wide range of settings. It compares the movement for urban renaissance in Europe with the New Urbanism of the United States and Canada, and asks whether the concerns that drive today's planning theory – issues like power, democracy, spatial patterns and globalisation- receive adequate attention in new urban approaches. The issue of aesthetics is also raised, as the author questions whether communities must be more than just attractive in order to be good.

With the benefit of twenty years' hindsight and a world-wide perspective, this book offers the reader unparalleled insight as well as a rigorous and considered critical analysis.

PART 1

THE RISE OF NEW URBAN APPROACHES

CHAPTER 1

NEW URBANISM(S) ASCENDANT

PARADIGM SHIFT?

In an address to the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) in 1982, Leon Krier railed against modernism. If he were the head of RIBA, Krier vowed, he would plaster over the memorials the Institute had given to modernist architects whom he accused of destroying European cities and culture (Krier 1984a). Two decades later, RIBA elected a president who promoted new urban approaches, and the British government had committed itself whole heartedly to an ‘urban renaissance’. How do we explain the transformation of dogma not only in the United Kingdom but in the United States, Canada, and several other countries as well? How did modernism find itself supplanted by a new urbanism that seeks inspiration in our urban past? Where did the traditional urban revival come from, what does it advocate, and why has it become so popular? These questions permeate this book.

The new urbanism involves new ways of thinking about urban form and development. Drawing on historic lessons from the most beautiful and successful cities, new urban approaches affirm the appeal of compact, mixed use, walkable, and relatively self-contained communities. Instead of car-oriented development practices, new urbanism argues for traditional architecture and building patterns that facilitate walking and that create strong urban identities. In sum, in an era when modernism has profoundly affected the shape of the city, new urbanism presents a new image of the good community.

This new way of planning and thinking about the city has travelled quickly, gaining the ears of practitioners and decision makers on several continents. In some ways, the dissemination of new urbanism parallels the rapid spread of garden city ideas a century earlier. New urbanism has become extraordinarily influential in the USA and Canada, making its way into suburban forms in many regions, and even supplanting conventional zoning in a few areas. Urban villages have made an impact in the UK and Europe, with government programmes to encourage innovation in many projects. We also find experiments in countries such as Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Turkey, South Africa, and Nicaragua. Although not every country uses the ‘new urbanism’ label for its activities, the Congress for the New Urbanism has given several international projects awards as good examples of the movement (e.g., CNU 2003, 2004b).

One of the key questions raised by new urbanism is its transferability. Drawing on a particular cultural history for its iconography, the movement looks to classical European cities, vibrant ethnic neighbourhoods of early twentieth-century America, and small towns for inspiration. Are its insights universal, or are they culturally situated in a particular time and place? The proponents of new urbanism have developed charters that present their principles as universal and timeless. New urban approaches have become so deeply intertwined with the strategies necessary to keep cities competitive in an era of globalization, that a high level of consensus supports their application internationally.¹ Yet some critics might challenge the suitability of employing these ideas so widely.

I am particularly interested in exploring new urbanism in theory and practice. In doing so, I use the term new urbanism in a broad sense, including American conceptions of ‘The New Urbanism’ but also encompassing related new urban approaches used in other countries that similarly draw on historic precedents and principles for inspiration. I want to investigate how new urbanism considers planning theory in its practice. Beauregard (2002:184) says that ‘New Urbanism is both an urbanistic practice and a theory of urbanism’. How is new urbanism developing theory, and how does it contribute to our understanding of theory? How is planning theory responding to new urbanism and the insights its practice generates? Does new urbanist practice live up to its own theory? Are projects achieving the aims of the movement? Where do the challenges to creating good communities through new urbanism reside?

During the last two decades, new urban approaches have generated hundreds of books and thousands of articles. It has become impossible to keep up with the burgeoning literature in the field. Some well-known celebrities, including the Prince of Wales and Canadian billionaire Galen Weston, have taken a keen interest in promoting new urbanism. The mass media has profiled the movement in magazines, newspapers, and television. Some new urban communities are spectacularly beautiful and telegenic places (see Figure 1.1). Seaside, Florida, even made it to the big screen as a stage set for the movie, The Truman Show. Hundreds of consulting firms now specialize in new urbanism, and plans are being rewritten in many places to support new urbanist principles.

What drives this interest in new urbanism? Some express it in a word: sprawl. The twentieth-century city seems to have no limits, oozing inexorably over the landscape with little form or character. Suburban gridlock and a growing dissatisfaction with the placelessness of twentieth-century development put urban form back onto the public agenda. The former mayor of Toronto, John Sewell (1977), expressed the sentiments of many others in decrying ‘jumblurbia’: the monotony of uniform caroriented suburbs, and of commercial strips that look the same everywhere. Globalization has generated what Kunstler (1993) calls the ‘geography of nowhere’ and Rowe (1991) sees as an undefined middle landscape: a ‘sub’urban environment that is less than urban, yet far from rural (Duany et al. 2000). The mandate of new urban approaches is to facilitate the search for character and identity, and to repair the ailing landscape (Kelbaugh 2002).

Figure 1.1 Handsome civic spaces
Attractive civic buildings, such as the community centre pavilion in Fallsgrove (Rockville, MD), epitomize new urban approaches. New urban communities are often extraordinarily photogenic.

The resentment of sprawl has spread quite far. Our popular culture seems to accept the premise that the suburbs are meaningless places. The suburbs – home to the majority of urban dwellers in many nations – have become the butt of jokes, and the locale for tragic movies. Worse still, the suburbs find themselves accused of generating social ills from anomie to road rage. Few stand ready to defend the suburbs.

As state agents charged with helping to generate better communities, planners by necessity search for appropriate urban strategies. In recent decades, planners have shouldered the blame for many of the problems of the city. In their efforts to find positive alternatives to suburban sprawl, many have found considerable appeal in new urbanism. Planners need theory and practices that offer a way out of a downward urban spiral, methods that respond enthusiastically to the challenges of growth. New urban approaches present hope for a better future.

The search for an alternative paradigm for urban development goes back to at least the 1970s. The energy crisis and accumulated government debt of the 1970s led to fiscal conservatism and retrenchment in the 1980s. David Harvey (1994) says that the end of the era of industrial accumulation spawned a period of flexible accumulation along with a new urban crisis. Certainly the fortunes of cities had begun to change, with many industrial cities showing clear signs of decline. Historic structures threatened by destruction became sites of contention and dispute: rallying points for a new approach to development.

The population was also changing. Many of the premises that had supported the ascendance of the garden city model in the early twentieth century no longer held.² Households were getting smaller, and often included two working adults. The population was aging rapidly. The cost of housing had become a significant barrier to many families. By the 2000 census in the USA, 25 per cent of households had a single person; half the population was 35 years or older. The same thing, or worse, was happening in other societies as well. Smaller, older households would need a different kind of city (Chiras and Wann 2003).

Into this opening – where the modernist city found itself challenged on several counts – stepped the vigorous prophets of new urbanism. As an antidote to the placeless suburbs, they offered a new prescription for neighbourhoods that followed historic principles and buildings that employed traditional materials. To reduce the ailments generated by car-oriented development, they advocated urban living in vibrant, connected, and diverse places. Their ideas have inspired a generation of designers and planners.

Despite the burgeoning consensus about new urban approaches among practitioners, we also find growing criticisms. The modernists’ disdain for nostalgia is understandable: they see glorification of the past as naïve or wishful thinking. Often committed to finding innovative strategies for overcoming inequities, the modernists see no hope in efforts that failed previously.

Some might argue that new urbanism ignores complex urban realities. Indeed, new urbanism in many ways facilitates suburban development by making growth more attractive. Zimmerman (2001) argues that while it claims to promote urban lifestyles, new urbanism in fact legitimates growth on the urban fringe. As Marcuse (2000) says, new urbanist developments are not new and not urban. In some ways, new urbanism contributes to the problems of the suburbs: for example, its costs are high, making housing less affordable (Bookout 1992b). Making suburbs pretty does not undo injustice or stop sprawl.

New urbanism successfully found catchy concepts for packaging its message. For instance, its advocates have used the concept of ‘Euclidean zoning’ so extensively that one now hears the term regularly in planning discourse. Putting the name of a Greek mathematician in front of the word zoning sounds scientific.³ Of course, in this case ‘Euclid’ refers to the US Supreme Court decision that approved the use of municipal zoning tools in Euclid, Ohio, in 1926. In using the adjective ‘Euclidean’, the new urbanists effectively dismiss zoning by making it appear overly rational and ancient. Similarly, the development of a smart growth agenda proved brilliant. By defining its own solutions as ‘smart’ the new urbanists have drawn the clear inference that other choices are ‘dumb’.

A strong streak of environmental or spatial determinism runs through new urbanism (Harvey 1997). In this it follows many paradigms that have had immense influence in planning practice. Certainly the garden city revealed deterministic assumptions in its normative model. Its advocates believed that building satellite cities could control sprawl, protect agricultural land, safeguard the family, and eliminate the ills of the industrial city. Garden city ideas appealed widely and travelled to many countries to inspire planners during the twentieth century (Ward 1992). Of course, practice demonstrated that planning garden cities did not solve the problems of the city: indeed, we might argue that the garden city solution generated the problems that now inspire the new urbanists. Can we expect new urbanism to be similarly successful in being applied cross-culturally, and similarly unsuccessful in curing the ills of the city?

As new urbanism travels we see it transforming. Already we can argue that there is not a single new urbanism but rather many new urbanisms. ThompsonFawcett (2003b) has documented clear evidence of a sharing of influences back and forth across the Atlantic and beyond. As with the earlier case with the garden city paradigm, the principal proponents of contemporary planning practice from Europe and North America engage in constant exchanges of ideas and debates. Leon Krier and Andres Duany appear to enjoy a rapport that has significantly affected their work.⁴ In developing theory and planning principles, urbanists on both sides of the ocean build on each other’s experience and insights. Practice may, however, take different forms. ‘New Urbanist praxis has not become universalized over time and space; distinct variations exist’ (Thompson-Fawcett 2003b:268). Hence at times I use the somewhat broader term ‘new urban approaches’ to signify that while the practitioners may not call what they do new urbanism, and while we see regional differences in emphasis, we do find many commonalities in the principles and visions that support contemporary planning practice in a wide range of contexts world-wide.

WHAT’S IN A NAME?

New urban approaches appear under a variety of names. The early projects done by Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk were often called neo-traditional town planning or traditional neighbourhood design (TND). Peter Calthorpe and Doug Kelbaugh are known for transit-oriented design (TOD), transit villages, and pedestrian pockets. Since around 1993, with the development of the Congress for the New Urbanism, these approaches have fused in the ‘New Urbanism’ (usually written with capital letters by its proponents). By the mid to late 1990s, many people were talking about urban villages as nodes of new urban development. The National Governors’ Association in the USA used the term new community design, and Emily Talen (2001) tried out traditional urbanism, but those did not catch on in a big way. By the late 1990s, the British grew excited about an urban renaissance and launched urban village programmes, while the Americans and Canadians signed on to smart growth. In an era where branding has become the key to marketing success, the new urbanists have been successful in establishing their solutions as the strategies for achieving better places.

Whatever the label used, these new urban approaches share common principles: fine-grained mixed use, mixed housing types, compact form, an attractive public realm, pedestrian-friendly streetscapes, defined centres and edges, and varying transportation options. In many cases – although not universally – they favour traditional architectural and design patterns, open space networks, and connected street layouts.

New urban projects are appearing with increasing frequency in many countries. Each year, the New Urban News (produced by the CNU) reports with pride on projects proposed or underway. Thousands of people now live in new urban communities: many people find them beautiful and meaningful living environments. Are the places that have been built examples of good communities? Not everyone believes so. Scully (1991) implied that they might be a new suburbanism. Leung (1995) thought they were a new kind of sprawl. Barber said ‘sprawl with trim’ (1997:A2). Pyatok (2000:814) suggested ‘a more seductive form of business as usual’. Baxandall and Ewen (2000:251) criticized a form that they saw as the ‘fantasy theme park village’, while DeWolf (2002) lamented what he thought were faux towns. Shibley (2002) damned them as Potemkin villages. Marshall (2004) called them suburbs in disguise. In earlier work I also challenged the ability of new urbanist developments to make a significant difference. I argued that, like the garden city paradigm before it, new urbanism was still producing ‘cookie-cutter’ suburbs: stamped out in uniform patterns (Grant 2002a). Getting projects built does not necessarily mean achieving the principles that new urbanism promotes.

Indeed, where we could argue that the war on blight produced suburbs on steroids, we might say that the war on sprawl is producing suburbs in period costume. The bulked up suburbs of the modernist era led to significant long-term health and economic implications; the dressed up suburbs of the contemporary period mask continuing inequities and unsustainable behaviours.

With his characteristic acerbic wit, Duany dismisses such criticisms. He and other new urbanists see academics as threatened by new urbanism, and find the attacks unconvincing (Ellis 2002). Undoubtedly there is more than a grain of truth in that observation. With success comes criticism, some based on envy of a paradigm that has enjoyed such ready popularity. Some criticism reflects discomfort with the premises and assertions, raising theoretical objections to the model. As examples of new urbanist developments spread, an increasing measure of criticism comes from studies of practice that ask whether new urbanism can actually achieve its aims. In response to the critics, new urbanists have begun a campaign to stake territory in theory and to document the successes of the projects built.

REPRESENTATIONS OF NEW URBANISM

In some ways we can see the history of planning as a series of new urban approaches. Crises in urban conditions lead to new planning concepts and approaches meant to rectify the situation. How do we situate the origin of the new urbanism of the late twentieth century?

Was the first salvo of new urbanism from DPZ, Duany and Plater-Zyberk’s planning and design firm, in 1982, with the creation of the Florida resort at Seaside?⁵ Or should we look earlier to Krier’s (1978) writing and lectures about urban quarters? Perhaps we might date it to the end of modernism with destruction of the PruittIgoe public housing high-rises in St Louis in 1972. Or we might look even earlier at the influence of Jane Jacobs’s (1961) short but provocative best-seller on the fate of American cities.

We could look much further back in history for inspiration. After all, Kelbaugh (1989) notes that new urbanists draw on 2000 years of experience in building good cities. The first planned cities in the Indus Valley date to as early as 2500 BC (Hammond 1972). They feature some of the principles that new urbanists employ today: mixed use, small grid blocks, pedestrian orientation. The lessons of ancient cities give us a sense of the range of approaches to urbanism through history: varied ideas of what the city can be or should be.

New urbanism takes a selective look at history, drawing its lessons primarily from the classical traditions of the Greeks, Romans, and Europeans. Urbanism in these traditions typically facilitated individual and cultural aggrandizement. The Greeks and Romans, and later colonizing European nations, built planned settlements as a way of achieving individual or imperial ambitions. Settlements controlled space. In these examples, classical principles served the interests of power. Urban form became a vehicle for conditioning submission.

In finding inspiration in the ‘timeless ways’ of classical forms, new urbanists rarely consider the cultural and social context in which their treasured principles developed. They abstract the architecture from its setting and social meanings. They value the aesthetics of classical forms while they focus on trying to meet the needs of contemporary urban residents.

REPRESENTATIONS OF HISTORY

History constitutes an integral component of new urbanist theory and practice. New urbanism uses history for inspiration. As every historian knows, of course, history involves selection and interpretation. Contemporary experience and our aspirations for the future inevitably frame our understanding of history. We do not write history on a blank slate, but on a parchment created from what we know and love.

In writing history, then, we link our past with our present and our future. Our interpretation of history can become a justification for a break with the present to influence the possibilities of the future. Similarly, arguments we might have about the future often involve projections of the past.

The history we know, the stuff of text book and enc...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• List of Boxes
• Illustration Credits
• Notes on Contributors
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• List of Terms and Measurements
• Part 1: The Rise of New Urban Approaches
• Part 2: New Urbanism(s) in Practice
• Part 3: The Prospects for New Urbanism(s)
• Notes
• Bibliography