In a post this week, Witold Rybczynski critiqued the New Urbanist movement (not kindly), and along the way listed what he felt were the important ideas that have affected American cities in the last 20 years:
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The other day a visiting Polish architect asked me what I thought of the new urbanism movement. It is a good question. On the one hand, the continued expansion and growth of the Congress for a New Urbanism is impressive. I recall the first meeting, in Alexandria, Virginia, in 1993. Barely filled a small room. Today the annual conventions attract halls full of enthusiastic members.
New urbanism was jump-started by Seaside, whose celebrity and undoubted success—financial as well as architectural—encouraged real estate developers, community and neighborhood groups, city planners and architects, to take a long hard look. Many liked what they saw.
But while new urbanists have attempted to shed their small town/suburban/Truman Show image, they have had no similarly successful and exemplary big-city project. No High Line. No Disney Hall. No Fifteen Central Park West.
What are the important ideas that have affected American cities in the last 20 years?
- The development of waterfronts.
- The renaissance in constructing urban parks.
- The move of genXers and retirees into downtowns.
- High-rise urban living and Vancouverism.
- The popularity of urban bicycling and bike-rental programs.
- Ditto for Zipcars.
- Urban farmers markets and community gardens.
- Urban charter schools.
- The dramatic expansion in attendance of urban cultural institutions, especially art museums.
- Urban tourism.
- Downtown trophy buildings.
- The emergence of influential big-city mayors.
Have any of these been the result of the new urbanism movement?
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Robert Steuteville responds in Better! Cities & Towns:
Cities are more just than a few signature projects. They are more than demographic and social trends. Cities are shaped by the day-to-day decisions on streets, buildings, codes, and public spaces. In the last 20 years, new urbanists have been among the strongest advocates for a public realm that supports people. Many other individuals and groups, not associated with New Urbanism, have also promoted this approach. Now many public officials and ordinary citizens are taking up this cause.
If that means that new urbanists don’t get credit for these ideas, that’s fine. But let’s not forget the ideas themselves or the critical role they play in the health of cities.
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Indeed, some Vancouverites who played a role in the development of Vancouverism felt that what we have here is, in its way, new urbanism with density. Still, some of the New Urbanists were never able to reconcile our use of the highrise with their beliefs on the proper scale of a city.
Still, some of the New Urbanists were never able to reconcile our use of the highrise with their beliefs on the proper scale of a city.
That’s true, but other New Urbanists hold Vancouver up as a model. And one prominent New Urbanist is currently designing two one-hundred story residential towers for New York City.
There’s nothing in the Charter of the New Urbanism that prescribes height. Most New Urbanists, however, support the idea of the Transect, and would probably say, in a place of tall towers, design tall towers.
As a practicing planner in a US city devasted by autocentric policies, I can say with complete confidence that the New Urbanist movement has had the greatest influence on my newly acquired understanding of traditional urbanism and the nuances of diversity and complexity as illustrated by the Transect and implemented through form-based codes. The laundry list of important ideas will pale in comparison to the whole-scale and long-term dramatic changes unfolding as a result of New Urbanism.
IMO, New urbanism and its variants is right up there with Christopher Alexander’s Pattern Language as providing a coherent way forward for planners, developers and, most importantly, elected officials to think about everyday urbanism. Prior to its introduction into the city-building conversation most North American cities and their ‘burbs had no operational philosophy to guide development. BAU, business as usual, you might say.
Love the way Frank put it. It’s a coherent language and structure, which also (helpfully, scientifically) give critics something clear to critique or build on. Kunstler uses archaeology as a metaphor, that NUists have done the work excavating the forgotten designs of pre-war.
This top comment is key to me: “The only dependable definition of New Urbanism is the Charter itself. The “new” is really just the result of a new generation returning to good urbanism, which was almost forgotten in the 60 years of the Great Sprawl Experiment.”
I agree whole-heartedly with Frank and Neil21 and find it odd that someone as bright as Witold Rybscynski cannot see this.
Ron Richings
And perhaps the rub in Vancouver, in terms of John’s comment, is the penchant for putting tall towers where there previously were none. Like the two now in Marpole/Granville, where none of the pre-existing buildings are more than four stories.
There seems to be no recognition that those who we now regard as ridiculous in their pursuit of freeways, suburbs, etc. were every bit as convinced of their ‘rightness’ as are the highrise boosters of today. Sincerity and conviction are no guarantee of correctness – particularly when the ‘hidden hand’ of big real estate development dollars are involved.
What will citizens and planners fifty years from now regard as the major follies of this era?