HomeMy WebLinkAboutA006 - Article: Why New Urbanism Fails i: New Urbanism' FallsY
Since the early 1990s New Urbanism has slowly gathered
strength, a building storm that finally burst onto the American
mainstream only a few years ago. Its "neotraditional"
principles - wide sidewalks and narrow streets, front porches
and rear garages, central squares and shopping districts -
garnered attention across Canada and the United States..
Some of the communities that resulted tried to emulate small
towns while others resembled urban neighbourhoods. In the
end, however, their goal was the same: create new
developments.that are community- and people-oriented.
Unfortunately, as popular and seemingly positive these
developments are, they fail in their objective and ultimately
reinforce the strength of the auto-oriented suburban
environment. They are feel-good faux-towns, cosy and
nostalgic developments which feign urbanity without making
the effort to actually be urban.
One of the fundamental tenets of the New Urbanism is the
reinforcement of community life. This is why lots are smaller,
houses are closer to the street, sidewalks are plentiful and
garages banished to the rear of the house. This, in theory,
allows neighbours to chat and say hello while strolling down
the street to fetch some milk at the corner store. Many New
Urbanist developments are separated into small segments,
each with its own central focus - a square, perhaps - and a
small grocery store. Downtown main streets are also vital to
the New Urbanist ideology. Ideally, they are concentrations of
vital retail services, restaurants and cafes where people from
around the neighbourhood can bump into each other on
broad sidewalks.
In keeping with the concept of traditional design, residential
areas often contain architecture meant to resemble that of
small towns. Brick townhouses, white picket fences and
Colonial homes abound, sometimes creating a contrived
atmosphere that seems less like a real neighbourhood and
more like a television set. As Michael Sorkin wrote in the
September 1998 issue of Metropolis magazine, "New
Urbanism reproduces many of the worst aspects of the
Modernism it seeks to replace iz% [it] promotes another style
of universality that is similarly overreliant on visual cues to
produce social effects." Instead of actually being successful
urban neighbourhoods, New Urbanist developments simply
look like urban neighbourhoods.
New Urbanist developments may be aesthetically pleasing,
J
but aesthetics alone do not create community or urbanity.
New Urbanist towns too often commit the most heinous of
urban sins: they segregate zones. Certainly, it is not
uncommon to find small commercial outlets in the residential
quarters of neotraditional developments, but by and large
these neighbourhoods follow the standard planning principle
of the past fifty years, which is to distinctly separate zones
according to use. The vast majority of commercial
establishments are constricted to designated town centres
surrounded by a ring of residential areas with few bridges to
connect the two sections. This zone segregation keeps New
Urbanist communities from resembling the small towns and
urban neighbourhoods they strive to become. They lack the
organic growth and fluid blend of multiple uses that make
urban neighbourhoods so successful.
The problem with segregated zones is that a reliance on the
automobile is constructed just as it is in normal suburban
areas. Since town centres are often too far out of easy
walking distance from many homes, cars are needed for a
trip to buy groceries or to rent a video. The results are town
centres that seem_like inverse strip malls, with pedestrian
friendly Main Streets lined by charming buildings (governed
by strict architectural controls), yet large parking lots behind.
Jane Jacobs noted in an interview with James Howard
Kunstler that "the notion of a shopping centre as a valid kind
,J
of downtown has taken over. It's very hard for architects of
this generation even to think in terms of a downtown Q that
is owned by different people with different ideas." Similarly,
she stated in an interview with Reason that "the New
Urbanists want to have lively centres QY2 [yet] they don't
seem to have a sense of the anatomy of these hearts." In
New Urbanism, the strip mall is designed quaintly with
parking out of sight and building aesthetics governed by
developer- or community-set controls. This is not an
acceptable alternative to a real town centre.
One of North America's largest New Urbanist developments
is McKenzie Towne in Calgary, Alberta. Located several miles
from the downtown area, McKenzie Towne embodies all the
flaws I see in modern New Urbanism: segregated zones, an
inadvertent reliance on the car, a contrived atmosphere. And
while the original section of the development contains a wide
variety of mixed density housing, it was recently announced
that new sections will separate housing types from_ each
other - yet another similarity between standard suburbia and
New Urbanist suburbia. Wendell Cox, a staunch critic of the
New Urbanism, said it best when he wrote that beneath
McKenzie Towne's neotraditional exterior "beats the heart of
suburbia."
What disturbs me most about the popularity of the New
Urbanism is that it has led us to neglect the old urbanism.
i
What is wrong with the organic neighbourhoods that fill inner
cities? They never stopped working, as countless
metropolises can attest. Most New.Urbanist neighbourhoods
are greenfield developments built without context on urban
peripheries. Many lack adequate transit service to existing
•urban neighbourhoods, standing alone in a vacuum of more
typical subdivisions. New Urbanism tries to fool us into
believing it is the saviour of urbanity when in reality it is
nothing more than a new style of slipshod suburban
development. It is a pretty veil over common suburbia.
Christopher ®eWolf is editor and webmaster of
UrbanphQto.net, a grassroots website established in 1999 to
promote urbanism and explore urban issues through
photography.
Sent from my Phone