The CNU

May 21, 2007
The CNU
     New Urbanists from all over the land -- and as far away as Australia -- converged in Philadelphia this past weekend to sort out their gains and losses for the year against the background of a nation punch drunk on "liquidity" and free-floating dread. The city of Philadelphia looked perkier than anyone could remember -- at least the square mile emanating in a quadrant roughly southeast from William Penn's statue atop city hall to the burnished alleys of 18th century Society Hill. At lunch hour Rittenhouse Square was full of young cubicle critters seeking air and light, and six hours later the bars were doing a brisk business in twelve-dollar martinis.

     The Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) was formed in 1993 by a cadre of revolutionary architects who had decided that enough was enough with a nation bent on committing suicide by strip mall. From the start, their mission was bold, coherent, and heroic: to present a clear alternative to the mindless devouring juggernaut of suburbia.

     Also from the start, they were accused of being "elitists," "un-American," "enemies-of-art-and-free-expression," "snooty enablers of white yuppie separatists," "footlings of the Neo-cons," and "sentimental saps" -- all for suggesting that perhaps human beings might benefit from living in places worth caring about.

     The New Urbanists became known mostly for the real estate ventures that were produced in their name -- first the iconic "new town" Seaside, Florida, and then scores of other projects based on what they called the Traditional Neighborhood Development (TND). Some of these projects were badly compromised by the zoning boards who ruled on their details. Some were wannabes and co-opted rip-offs. Some, like Vincent Graham's I'On project in Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina, achieved high levels of artistry despite the obstacles thrown up by the mental defectives who opposed them.

      The New Urbanists were equally active in the existing cities, leading in the adaptive re-use of industrial ruins, brownfields, and whole districts that had been written off as hopeless beyond the pale. Figures like Mark Nikita and Dorian Moore, who worked in the rough context of downtown Detroit, and Ray Gindroz of Pittsburgh who pioneered the conversion of reviled and decrepit public housing all over the country into places where a human spirit might rediscover itself.

     The greatest achievement of the New Urbanists in these years was not the long list of TNDs or the urban interventions that saved whole districts, but in the retrieval of knowledge and principle that had been thrown away by a hapless and craven officialdom of planning -- abetted by the mandarin ideologues who ruled the university architecture schools, and who were dedicated above all to defending the antisocial prerogatives of their jive-narcissism. Despite all that, the New Urbanists worked doggedly to reconstruct a body of culture (i.e. urban design). They processed it in a series of brilliantly clear manuals like the Transect and the Smart Code, and gave everyone from the carpenters to the bankers a lexicon for understanding the difference between plain crap and stuff with a plausible future.

     The New Urbanists came on the scene just as the final exuberant phase of the cheap oil fiesta was getting underway -- meaning the climactic phase of American suburban expansion. They positioned themselves as a minority opposition to the "conventional" developers who utterly dominated the landscape. The things that were built under the New Urbanist name represented probably less than two percent of everything built since 1990. The work they did occurred as a valiant swimming against the tide -- or, more specifically, against a huge blast of reeking, toxic entropy.

      The final blowout of cheap oil is now ending, and the suburban juggernaut is entering its death throes. It wasn't slain by the New Urbanists, but they will be the last ones standing -- just as the little warm-blooded mammals were the last creatures standing when the dinosaurs expired in the warm Cretaceous mud. The focus of their work will certainly have to change. There will be no more suburban subdivisions (or the accessories and furnishings of them -- the strip malls, Big Box pods, and fried-food out-parcels), and the TND will emerge not as a counterpoint to all that crap, but as the template for a redefined type of village or town scaled to the new realities of available energy.

     We will be inhabiting the terrain differently from now on. Whatever intact farmland remains will have to be reserved for feeding ourselves, and the "countryside" that has been regarded as having only scenic or recreational value for so many decades, will have to be both productive and carefully tended by human hands. Our big cities will certainly shrink, contract, and the fortunate ones will redevelop and re-densify at their old cores and around their waterfronts. The part of Philadelphia that we were in last weekend may be about as big as a sustainable city can get -- minus the skyscrapers, which, alas, will be obsolete.

      The demographic shift to come will be a shocking reversal of what has been going on since the start of the industrial revolution. The small towns and small cities of America -- the places that have moldered in desolation and squalor for decades -- will be coming back to life, surrounded by an agricultural landscape shaped by human attention.

     What we'll need in this process will be the most valuable things that the New Urbanists recovered along the way: the knowledge required to create a human dwelling place with a future. That was really the extent of their ambitions all along. But it was too straightforward for a twisted culture to understand. In a few years, even the mental defectives and the professional jive-narcissists will understand where we've been and where we are going.

Comments

[PeteF]

Good post. It's nice to see you post something positive, or at least as positive as you ever get. The question is not whether we have problems, but what we should be doing about them, and this post shows that some people are taking action.

[JungleWoods]

Here in my little southern town, there is a New Urbanism project in the works. It confuses some of the rednecks, but many of them are catching on. The "Mill Town" project is interesting. It's based on the old mill towns of the early 20th century and they will break ground on a parcel less than a 1/2 mile from the town center. Also, it will be very near to where the folks that work in the "service" sector live and they can walk to work. I rarely am excited about development in my little corner of Florida but this project gives me hope for the future.

Polly

[Dave]

The ideas of Ebenezer Howard, Lewis Mumford, Paul Goodman, Kirkpatrick Sale, E Schumacher deserve some mention in above post as well.

[rogercraig]

It seems as if all our political institutions are trying to legislate reality, somewhat similar to cleaning up pi, a messy transcendental number, and rounding it's value to 3: the earth is flat because we want it that way.

[Nicholas Paredes]

I like the optimistic Jim! All is not pretty on the new development side, and expensive martinis aside many great old buildings are being gutted for the urban version of the McMansion. I wish mayor Daley were as interested in these old, more reasonable spaces, rather than vertical versions of the suburbs. My response to the Times’ comments on green architecture is that green architecture is no architecture. But, your suggestions on urban intelligence are exactly what is urgently needed.

We don’t need new building, we need a new understanding before we build again. Stop decorating and start living in the spaces to gain an understanding of what they are. Hell, we don’t know how to sew or cook any longer let alone compost correctly. The three aspects of our plan in Chicago are ecology, community, and learning. With a professional development background, people have for example helped build new villages in Chile teaching the inhabitants how to govern, we need to extend these strengths to relearn and reteach urbanity in a different way, involving the people who are here before those that refuse to learn are completely pushed out.

My concern about those small towns is finding young people who are interested in remaining in them. The bright lights of the cities aren’t going to go away just get more efficient, perhaps after a short hiatus. Demographics point to contraction outside of immigration. Maybe like in the past, new immigrants will finally perform the roles that past newly minted citizens have outgrown. This is already happening in many places.

[Kickaha]

A link I got from ml-implode.com shows a current housing market where, "homes in vibrant, renewing urban neighborhoods are a strong component in today's dismal market. Culturally-challenged and gas-necessitating exurbs continue to feel acute pain."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/18/AR2007051800754_pf.html

[ryan]

One of the challenges of the 21st century will be furnishing the houses. It is hard to furnish an 80 year old 6 bedroom house today, because furniture is so large today.

Who will design the furniture of the 21st century? Who will build it?

[EastCoastShock]

There's still plenty of homes waiting to be redeveloped in Philadelphia. White flight hit the city hard and, along with the neoliberal economic policies of the 1980's onward, created enormous ghettoes that are only now being gentrified again. As a city, it was built rather intelligently and can handle a much larger population than it has now, provided rail transportation is revitalized. The caveat is that substantial investment will need to go into the decrepit housing stock.

[JS]

The main switch will occur when businesses stop saying "I need a place for my customers to park!" and start saying "I need to be located near my customers," and residents stop saying "I need 3000 sq feet and an acre," and start saying "I need to be located near where I shop and work." All the architecture and urban planning will follow from there.

[Jeffrey S.]

Nice work Jim,
Positive _and_ educational.

[Brian]

Check out "A Pattern Language" by Christopher Alexander,et.al. for a primer on building for humans, as opposed to building for cars.

[asoka]

Interesting post, Jim.

When the skyscrapers are obsolete, will the people who worked in them be unemployed? How will housing that lasts be constructed on the allotment provided by an unemployment check?

[Rudi Cilibrasi]

I have a slightly different theory of how it might go:

http://cilibrar.com/misc/writing/gtheory.html

I agree that CNU is part of the answer and I will surely participate in my town as I am able in the near future but I think we need a lot of help in other areas too.

[kakesue]

"footlings of the Neo-cons"

I do not understand what intelligent forward thinking architects and urban planners have to do with neo-cons. Might someone enlighten me?

[John]

Jim: Along the line of positive thinking. I propose that you solicit design ideas for adaptive reuse of the exurban and suburban wasteland.
I have spent a lot of time in South Asian villages...many of which are spread out with households around small individual plots rather than the European model of clustered housing and walk to the plot.
I envision a post peak oil exurbs where most of the cars have been sold for scrap, the garage is turned into an attached animal shed...goats and chickens... and the ground surrounding the house has been turned into garden. The adjacent kitchen/dining room is the one heated space in northern winters. There is an outhouse in the back. Human waste is composted, animal goes directly to the ground for food plants. Water and electricity are at best intermittent, say guaranteed for 6 hours every other day. Nodes along the feeder roads to the old subdivision have been turned into small market centers...of the flea and garden market variety with a small availability of outside goods brought by the 4 times per day bus.
This may be hell on earth for many Americans, but is actually a very pleasant life for many people on the planet.
I wonder if we can do it or are we going to go all Mad Max and revert to our violent tribal nature?

[Sam]

I visited the I'On website to see what it's all about. It looks magnificent, exactly the blend of commerce and liveability every community should aspire to. Unfortunately, the profiled homes are over a million bucks. The middle class, the folks who populate the vast suburban wastelands, can never afford to live in communities like this. In my own hometown of Austin, there is an enthusiastic renovation of downtown, with a successful blend of shops and condos. Of course, only the wealthy can afford to live there. Is there any way that these communities can be developed so that families making, say, $75,000 can afford to live in them?

[pete]

"The ideas of Ebenezer Howard, Lewis Mumford, Paul Goodman, Kirkpatrick Sale, E Schumacher deserve some mention in above post as well."
Yes, and how about Jane Jacobs?

[kd]

Well said, Sam. I live in Austin, too. Central Austin is still (for the most part) lovely and relatively safe, but the cost of housing is quickly becoming altogether out of reach for most folks. This trend will probably continue for awhile. Moving to one of the small towns near Austin is no solution on two accounts: real estate prices there are on a steep rise, and living in one of the outlying towns makes a person even more car-dependent if they work in central Austin.

[Weaseldog]

I'm beginning to see the late John Brunner as an optimist.

[FARfetched]

I figured somebody had to be thinking about this stuff. Thanks, JHK, for calling it to our attention.

I still think suburbia can reconfigure itself into something a bit more sustainable, using ideas like John's (among others). I wonder if exurban/rural developments would be better off or worse. There's one going up near FAR Manor; it's call "The Farms at blah blah" although I'll bet the covenants will prohibit even backyard vegetable gardens.

[LizM]

You were in Rittenhouse Square? Shoot! If I had known I'd have come downstairs to say hello.

I'm glad you thought the city looked good. A lot of buildings are being spruced up, and that's good. What you might not have noticed is the ones that have disappeared. For example the back of an historic structure on Rittenhouse Square which was amputated from it's facade to make way for a 30 plus story Robert Stern condo, and the three very old and rather beautiful buildings on 18th Street, which were demolished, over loud objections from all of us, to make way for the new building's commercial corridor.

The part of the story where we can't afford to tear down our past won't come fast enough for me.

[just a thought]

Keeping with the positive tone of Jim's post today, I'll post a link to a great Duany-designed mixed income community (with many Section 8 units) that is being built in Greensboro, N.C. ...

http://www.greensboro-nc.gov/Departments/hcd/planning/revitalization/willowoaks.htm

Willow Oaks represents the best planning practices for the 21st Century. A mixed-income resident base is creating the foundation for the new community. Rental and owner-occupied units appeal to and will house a wide spectrum of income levels, including 300 units for low-income residents who meet public housing eligibility requirements. A mixed-use land plan mingles single family and attached housing throughout the neighborhood. Block-faces have a seamless look, regardless of whether units are rented or owner-occupied. Service and civic uses are also being integrated into the neighborhood.

[greenbeans]

I concur with John's wonderful post on "design ideas for adaptive reuse of the exurban and suburban wasteland."

May I suggest also, that individual grass lawns will eventually be forsaken probably due to their impractical nature, perhaps leaving a typical Eastern suburb resembling more of an overgrown high-end trailer park or campground. Individuals inclined to agriculture will no doubt find conveniently placed eager customers. Perhaps several adjacent abandoned lots could be stripped of their housing materials and joined together at intervals to form community gardens, playgrounds for the children, and commons for mult-purpose uses.

[Peter Burke]

Optimistic Kunstler is good. Someone help me with the following concerns. At what point will the masses understand that their homes and lives in the suburbs are if fact in the last throes? There are millions of people in my state of California that are oblivious to the new normal that is now rearing its ugly head. How will this move to a sustainable future be initiated? The herd mentality will not be easy to contend with without leadership of some sort. The media is a joke. Our government is a dictatorship and incompetent all at the same time. Economic armageddon is right around the corner. The majority of people are truly in the dark. These are my concerns.

[Laura Louzader]

I second Nicholas Paredes' excellent post.

However, we may at some point have to turn our backs on the development of huge mega-skyscrapers of 100 and 150 story buildings.

I confess I love these buildings, that are so much what Chicago has always been about. However, these places could easily become absoutely unliveable in the event of a prolonged energy shortage, AND are very difficult to enter and evacuate in the event of major fire or other emergency. Think about having to get people 82 years old off the 131st floor of the Calatrava bldg proposed, and you can see buildings like this already impose a lot of extra costs on other taxpayers.

Since people want to live in these places and will have them even at the price of $5MM a unit, it would be good to require the developer to install rendundant systems, for running elevators and keeping the pipes from freezing, in the event the the type of emergency we might expect to experience when the grid becomes unreliable.

No bldg over 30 stories ought to go up without these emergency systems, and certainly nothing over 80 stories.