ArchWeek - A Better Suburbia

[Kevin Matthews]

This forum thread is for discussion of the ArchitectureWeek article:

[streetwall]

hmm... orienting houses around walkways and common areas? Didn't they they try this with housing projects? Those were colossal failures if I remember correctly.

Another thing is these "green" communities look just as low-density as their trad. subdivision counterparts. The developers and residents need to realize that the most effective efficency tool is DENSITY DENSITY DENSITY.
Duh.. if enough people are concentrated in a neighborhood then retail services within a 5 min. walk would be viable.

Otherwise we are just getting the same old suburbia repackaged in an "- dumb slur -sensitive" flavor. Residents still have to hop in their cars and drive 10 miles to the nearest sprawl mart and home despot.

In a place like California where developable land (within reasonable distance to urban/job centers) is running out fast people need to realize that the single-family home model of living should no longer be considered a birthright.

More sprawl is not the answer.

[Donald]

And density density density is not the answer either. The city of the past we remember by its handsome surviving fragments; but we do not always consider the social conditions that caused these buildings to be built - dense or otherwise- even though the literature of the past is replete with vivid descriptions of social injustice....like Pruit Igo among others. So this 70's ere development may have been ahead of its time even before the catch phrase Suburban Sprawl came about...and I applaud it.

When looking at the city of the present, we tend to have the same myopic vision - we see monuments, the treelined boulevards, the vibrant avenues; but we do not always see behind those facades the desolation, the hopelessness of so many.

The city is the habitat of the community - the measure of its civilization, the center of its commerce, the spawning ground for its culture.What then, are we to think of our cities today? If they are a record of our civilization, what is being said about us? That we are thoughtful planners and good builders? Hardly. That we respect nature and our environment? Hardly. The litany is long and painful.

What then are we saying about ourselves? That we don't care? Who would wish to have such an epithet?! Whatever the cities of the future become, the seeds of the future are now. What we conceive today is born tomorrow. The future grows from our reason, from our compassion, from our desire to improve - there is no other source. It is we who have the responsibility to create the habitat that reflects, at last, the aspirations of our republic....including every Americans right to live the American Dream in owning its own home (California isn't the only place to live that dream).

If we truly believe this- if we act by what we truly believe - then we shall pass on to the next generation the foundations for a better city, a better community, a better world....just as this neighborhood in California did so some 30 odd years ago

[streetwall]

You, like many sprawl-cheerleaders make two incorrect assumptions:

A. Density is bad; it causes social problems; dense neighborhoods offer a poor living standard.

You use the example of the Pruitt Igoe housing projects. The reason this hellhole had it's problems was not it's density. Something far more obvious. The entire population of the projects were poor people who did not live there by choice. The design did not help either. Projects like this have lots of "open space"; gardens, greens, walkways, ect. The "open space" you love so dearly, in fact is more often problematic than helpful in the built environment. Jane Jacobs explains in her classic The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Parks often attract menacing features because of its open space. In most cities (those where people actually still walk places) people obviously choose to avoid walking through parks and opt for streets instead.

Open spaces are where muggers and rapists hide. Open spaces in housing projects attract more than their fair share of seedy types and become convenient dumping grounds. Places like Pruitt Igoe are developments that on paper would make modernist gurus like Le Corbisuer cream in their pants. His vision after all, was that everyone should live in clusters of tall towers, each surrounded by park greens. The urban planners of the postwar era were idiotic enough enable the plans of the aforementioned modernist misanthrope. They chose the poor as their test subject. The test obviously failed. These planners failed so bad because they designed living places thought up by people who did not understand how cities fuction. Density was not the cause. If your fear of density was correct, a place like SOHO in Manhattan would be unsafe and be plagued with horrid living conditions. This is obviously not the case.

The whole reason I used density as the primary method of making a human settlement more efficient, is that it concentrates enough people in a single area so all vital local services can be reached within a quick walk. Let's imagine a subdivision, population: 120, with single family homes spaced on cul de sacs about 100 feet from one another. This is neighborhood A.

Ok, now imagine that same sized parcel of land with streets laid out in a connected network, lined with 3 story townhouses. The total population of neighborhood B is 1,000. The streets of neighborhood B has a high enough population that its streets can support a number of uses. Besides homes there is a corner grocery, a pharmacy and a cafe within walking distance of the entire neighborhood. In fact people can walk, bike or drive (if they must) to reach these destinations. But the fact there are a number of transportation options for accomplishing basic errands means much less energy is being used (and the air is cleaner!) because people in this area are not forced to use automobiles to do these things.

Neighborhood A has streets lined with nothing but identical houses. Since the "homes" are spaced so far apart, the nearest grocery store is located on a very wide, specialized road designed to carry a mass of automobiles. The store serves customers for 10 subdivisions the size of the above mentioned neighborhoods, since it takes 10 neighborhood A's to equal the customer base of neighborhood B. Since 10 times the amount of land is consumed for that same population it would take forever to walk to the grocery for most residents. So people must drive. On the car-filled arterial road where the store is located, there needs to be enough space for each customer to park their cars. So double the space of the store is allocated to a parking lot out front. Not only that, but the store itself is much bigger, since people now buy all their food in bulk as they use their cars as a cargo transport. The store size is magnified five times so bulk quantities of their food items can be stores.

The "green-friendly" subdivision you advocate looks a lot like neighborhood A. Since homes are just as low-density as a typical single-use sprawl pod, all residents must use their polluting automobiles to accomplish all their daily errands. If this "eco-village" was built higher density, perhaps some actual essential services would have located within walking/biking distance of most of the neighborhood.
The pollution and noise from all the cars negate any benefits from the cutsey canals and drainage creeks. If higher density living were permitted, perhaps the community would stray closers to its goal of becoming a truly self-sufficient place.



B. Owning a "home" means owning a detached single family structure.

The "home" as a freestanding wooden structure surrounded by an unproductive plot of grassy land has been ingrained into the American consciousness as the only properly place to live. The "American Dream/Home ownership" rhetoric is often used by those who are firmly for sprawl and against land-use regulations.

In fact owning a "home" can mean, owning half of a duplex or a co-op share/condominium in a building.

Anyways, I know this reply is kind of wrong, but please tell me again why density is bad and why it is not the answer for making a more efficient and - dumb slur -friendly community?

[Donald]

you wrote:

[streetwall]

Please explain why I am wrong. You have yet to do so.

[Donald]

Ok, I'll give you the depression scenario: The world where there were alot of potential customers who were not making much money, and it is reasonable to expect that many of them practice a more serious kind of gardening. They would garden to escape the dreary world. If they could produce high yields in their backyards, their gardens would recall Depression Homesteads and the Victory Gardens of World War II. Flannel shirts, overalls, and workboots rather than designer jeans characterize this market. It took twenty five years to knock down our education system and the community went along with it and it may take another twenty five years to rebuild it to where you think it should be in your "- dumb slur -friendly" world.

There are actually three scenarios to this, because in effect there are three Americas. Just as the American dream is part of a story about the United States, is why this can only be understood by those of us in America.

You are wrong in stating that I said density is bad or assumed it was bad. Where did you read that? You must have attended one of those government schools

[streetwall]

I don't know if we are on the same page here.

My original argument was that this "Village Homes" development would not be THAT much more - dumb slur -friendly than a conventional suburban housing pod. Residents of the "village homes" subdivision will still have to use their automobiles to acomplish most of their daily errands. Yes you mention there is space for gardening, but unless the residents are all vegans, they will get most of their food from the big-box grocery store, 5 miles down the local highway.

A true enviornmental community is densely populated enough so all essential retail establishments, schools and civic services are within biking/walking distance. (Yes, gardens can grow behind rowhouses and apartment buildings as many of those "victory gardens" were)

My previous retort was in response to the statement you made, "Density Density Density is not the answer either."

So what do you think the answer is?

[Donald]

Yes that biking and walking distance is a great convenience, even in my 2000 home suburbia sprawling envirnoment. It can be acheived even in that 70's style environment KM posted here and within walking distance of the core essentials...take a close look at the plan and envision it. Its there and in many other suburban neighborhoods its there. Look at Olmsted's suburban neighborhood plans and if you squint enough you will see some of his ideas in this posted plan as well.

You will never get to the point of no return and back to the density density density solution entirely, so a mixture is what we will be living with and what better way to make the less dense better than to hide that 4 wheeler in the rear and add those greenways in the front yard....thats all streetwall. And its everyday that I give thanks that I don't have a street wall to wake up to in the morning and still have the option to bike to the grocery store, golf course, lake, club and pool, school and post office all in a sprawling 2000 home developed (like an architect knew what he was doing type) community.

There are books that can help us acquire a proficiency in the art of developing what-if scenarios and thinking of the options. One that I recommend is The Art of the Long View by Peter Schwartz. It is a handy guide to help the architect use the scenario building process to plan the world in an uncertain world...one perhaps with or without walls.

One of my favorite quotes by Schwartz is:

[mcittone]

After reading this article, I finally ordered the Landscape Architecture case study of Village homes from my library, in lieu of being able to go there myself. I find the design fo this comuntiy quite inspiring, eitheer as one an alternative to, or a potential good influence on, the new urbanist groupthink that seems to have swept planning.

Planners fight to narrow streets in new urbanist codes. Why, then, do we plan new urban communities with streets in front of your houses and (generally imeprvious) alleys and garages behind your houses? I can't think fo anything more auto-oriented. Marketters of commercial new urbanism, such as Stapleton in Denver, say all this impersious surface is designed so that two-income families don't need to maintain a garden. Yet evidence from the Chesapeake Bay area shows that watersheds over 30% impervious virtually kill their streams. Not to mention the "heat island" effect in many cities. The narrow streets, natural swales, and open spaces at Village Homes were designed to handle runoff. U of Oregon researchers modelled a traditional suburb, a new urban development, and an open-space oriented development and found the latter to have the best impact on air, water and forest quality. (Girling et al 2000). I think Village Homes presents a naturalistic attempt Using "ecoservices" from greenery to passive solar orientation (hard to do at very high densities) to natural drainage systems seems like a great way build the less dense residential portions of cities. I'd definitely rather look out on an Aspen grove or a natural swale than an alley any day ...

Can Village Homes be improved? The designers admit as much. Village Homes are reasonably sized, with lots averaging 4000 square feet and 25% shared open space. There is a small commercial area. The gross density of 4 untis/acre is fairly low but beats the suburbia around it. However, there are 222 single-family units and only 22 apartments. Given demand and demographics, it seems to me probably at least 1 in 3 of our single-family units in most US cities could be attached townhomes and/or small cottages. This would add density while keeping the character intact (depending on how they're designed). Village Homes is not meant to be a town center and shouldn't be judged as such.

I think the difference between sprawl and Village Homes is that there is an attempt made to integrate ecology and the built environment. We in America are too used to thinking that development necessarily "destroys" the environment and therefore should be limitted to as small a footprint as possible. In planning, we start with the urban growth boundary and don't think enough about the character of development that fills that boundary ... I hope elements of Village Homes thinking will be integrated into our new (urban) developments ...

[Ice]

Extremely interesting article

However, I was wondering if anyone knew how much less this "village" was than a typical suburban plot?

I also found this to be quite interesting:

[Ice]

To clarify my question in the above post:

Does anyone know how much less the pop. per square mile (or similar data) is in this village compared to other suburban land plots?

[Architorture]

also on the "density density density issue" as it seems to be being called...

just b/c you are locating all of your services and shopping within the density of the city does not mean that all of those services are only existing there or that you are even containing sprawl...

our cities create an enormous demand for materials to come in from the outside... granted many services and vendors may be provided within the city but very little is actually produced there...

all one has to do is look at ancient rome as an example.... the city grew and grew but as it grew it became a ravenous consumer of 'import' goods... rome desolated the available resources around it so it continued to expand and expand and expand in a never ending hunt for more resources...

simply placing everyone in a city isn't going to solve environmental issues... for all the energy you are saving by taking cars off the road you have just added by creating a situation where more and more goods have to be shipped into the city...

[mcittone]

How much population density? I am at the library and don't have access to the Landscape Architecture Case Study (good overview) but the density of people/sq mile is higher than surrounding sububrs -- I forget by how much. The density of units is also decent -- 7/acre without counting open space; 4/gross acre (including 25% open space). This seems decent for a subruban form, and could be increased by integrating townhouses. The Corbetts said they think they could doa similar community at 3x the density, but I'm nto so sure about that unless it was mostly townhomes/clusters ....

[Ice]