The Secret Ingredients of New Urbanism [Forum] - eScholarship

F O R U M The Secret Tools of New Urbanism Steven Bodzin These forum pages are produced under an agree- ment between the Design History Foundation and the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU). CNU, which has no direct affiliation with Places, is a 501(c)3 corporation, receiving support from membership dues and sponsors, including the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Surdna Foundation, the U.S Envi- ronmental Protection Agency, the U.S. General Services Administration, and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Inquires about CNU membership should be made to: Congress for the New Urbanism 5 Third Street #725 San Francisco, CA 94103 415-495-1731 fax cnuinfo@cnu.org www.cnu.org Ask a New Urbanist, “Why do you waste your time?” A movement takes time and energy. Most designers don’t worry so much about their social legacy and their environmental impact. And most people who do care about such issues become political activists, nimbys, and even, on occasion, terrorists. What does it take for someone to con- vert a political and social sensibility into the design and development of real estate? I recently asked three prominent New Urban- ist practitioners what formed their sensibility, and how others would do the same. Their replies were, in most ways, quite different. Yet the same tools kept popping up: Travel agent. Measuring tape. Patience. Hope. Anger. Travel Agent The single item that comes up time and again for urbanists is travel. Travel reveals how to build, and how not to build. Sometimes, the travel does- n’t have to go far to take a big step. The urbanist aesthetic “is hard-wired,” states Andres Duany, of Duany-Plater Zyberk and Company. “I have taken students who grew up in sprawl. I have taken them to see street life. ‘Ah-hah!’ they say.” Such a revelation can happen in any real city, and even some small towns. For the advanced development of urbanist tastes, Robert Davis, developer of Seaside, Florida, recommends Europe above all. “Start with Rome,” he says. “The oldest and greatest city.” In Rome, one can see the attempts of Renaissance popes and others to transform a medieval warren into a legible city. Elsewhere in Italy, one can find the remains of the Ideal City movement, which Davis credits as “Perhaps the oldest antecedent to New Urban- ism.” He recommends Pienza, in particular, as a city that followed the Ideal City tenets in an infill context. “It had to face the constraints of politics,” he says, “But the result is more interesting than the greenfield projects of the same period.” Stefanos Polyzoides of Moule & Polyzoides Architects and Urbanists, and President of the Congress for the New Urbanism, credits his expe- riences as a child in Athens for his confidence in good urbanism. “I saw 60,000 people in a stadium without parking,” he says. “I saw the advantages of compactness and excellent neighborhood structure.” In America, Davis recommends Chicago. “We are in much the same pickly as our forebears were in 100-odd years ago, when industrial cities had grown at an astounding rate. It was a mess of in- adequate infrastructure and ugliness, inhospitable for habitation. City beautiful was posited and acted upon for 40 years, transforming the cities.” Duany recommends travel for the doubters of urbanism. “Go to China, to Pompeii, you’ll see hamlets, villages, towns, and cities. These forms appear across time and across cultures,” he says. But for Americans, he recommends visits only to the paradigm towns for the continent, all old settlements on the East Coast. “If you are devel- oping a hamlet, go see Waterford, Virginia. To see a village, go to Nantucket. The best town is Alexandria. The best American city is Washing- ton, or Boston’s Back Bay. These places give you the appropriate distances, scales, building set- backs, tree spacings.” Measuring Tape For travel to work, Duany recommends careful study of places. He maintains that exact imitation allow for certainty. “When a doctor looks in a chest, he can say, ‘That is an aorta. It PLACES 14:2