A Common Language of Urban Design [Congress for the New Urbanism]

Congress for the New Urbanism A Common Language of Urban Design Andres Duany The Congress lor the New Urbanism is organized around nine task forces. One of them, chaired by Andres Duanv and Stefanos Polyzoides, was chartered to establish a common nomenclature, ' l i t i s group originally proposed to complete a lexicon, conceived as an alphabetized list of useful terms accompanied by their definitions. This straightforward conception soon foundered, however, as i t became apparent that most of the elements to be defined could only be understood properly in relationship to others. I t seems that with authentic urbanism, no less than with true environmentalist!!, a tug on anything rustles something elsewhere. Rather than alphabetical order, urbanism calls for its terminology to be grouped within taxonomies of related terms. This established, it seemed natural to classify these elements according to their most common attributes. For example, i t is possible to range open spaces according to size or by environmental performance; thoroughfares could be grouped by relative traffic capacity and building types classified by function or arrayed according to the frontage that each occupies. Such disparate taxonomies however, do not support the integrated conception that authentic urbanism requires. They tend instead, to confirm the nomenclature of the spe­ cialists — that babel of planners, traffic engineers, environmentalists, urban designers, land- scapers, architects, preservationists, land use attorneys, developers, bankers and marketing experts — that is the current language of suburbia. This characteristic of suburbia is the origin of its failure. Despite being designed through a process that engages all these specialists, the product is rarely blended properly. Each profession is permitted to impose its perquisites, with the result usually being a col­ lection o f urban elements rather than urbanism itself. T h e streets are designed exclusively for traffic flow; the natural environment is circumscribed and disruptive to pedestrian con­ nectivity; shopping centers, office parks and residential areas are conceived in isolation; self-referential buildings ignore streets while fantastical landscaping ignores buildings. Such collections may well demonstrate all the elements of towns and cities statistically, but they are really just cartoon versions of the real thing. T h e search for a unified taxonomy yielded the chance discovery of the Transect. T h i s term is defined as a system of classification deploying the conceptual range o f more rural to more urban to arrange in useful order the typical elements o f urbanism. T h e transect quickly proved to be a natural ordering system, as every important element easily finds a place within its continuum. For example, a street is more urban than a road, a curb more urban than a swale, a brick wall more urban than shingled one, an allee of trees more urban than a cluster. Even the character o f streetlights can vary from metropolitan to rustic, depending on whether they are fabricated from cast iron, extruded pipe or wood posts. Beyond being a system of classification, the Transect has the potential to become an instrument of design. T h e correlation of the various elements by a common rural-to-urban continuum can be the basis for a system of zoning. N o more than five sections are neces­ sary to calibrate the transect to the neighborhood structure (which is the precondition o f authentic urbanism at any density). These are the Edge, General, Center, Core and Dis­ trict Zones.