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“New” Town of Kentlands by Duany and Plater-Zyberk
New Urbanism: Why Does It Look So Old?
The early New Urbanist defining work, “The New Urbanism, Toward an Architecture of Community” by Peter Katz, with an afterward by no less than Vincent Scully and essays by New Urbanist evangelists Todd W. Bressi, Peter Calthorpe, Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, Elizabeth Moule and Stefanos Polyzoides, annunciated the intellectual foundation for the movement that started in the early 90’s, and increasingly influences urban and suburban planning today. The New Urbanist pattern, ironically established in green farmland or wetlands in early communities such as Seaside, Kentlands, Windsor, Wellington and Playa Vista, has taken a firm hold on the development community, and is the established paradigm for many a development today.
“New” Town of Kentlands by Duany and Plater-Zyberk
Rejection of Technology
At its intellectual core, New Urbanism is the rejection of a technology, the automobile, and the enormous affect that technology has had not just on planning, but on the way we live. There is no disputing that the automobile has radically changed our lifestyles. The automobile affords us a great deal of mobility, freedom, autonomy, while it has made the world smaller and allows us freedom to travel, flexibility in where we live, work and play. Yet it also isolates us, places substantial demands on our time and finances, and, without thoughtful planning, renders our communities ultimately unfriendly to both pedestrian and driver alike.
The song says “Nobody walks in LA.” Los Angeles, and the vast majority of other towns and cities built since the automobile became the primary mode of transportation, are fundamentally different than those cities built before the auto. While newer cities allow more lifestyle and home choices, and certainly provide more opportunities in pursuit of a single family home, the “American Dream,” much is also lost. Postauto cities, to create a neology, provide few places to walk, to informally gather and congregate. Parks are often empty, and the mall, or its recent replacement, the lifestyle retail center, become the destinations. Though destination “lifestyle” centers fill with people, they fill largely with strangers, scores of people who share an experience yet rarely interact. A traditional town square, however, is quite the opposite – not so much a destination as a point of connection on the WAY to a destination. One who has spent time in an Italian piazza quickly observes that few people go to the piazza. Instead, one passes through the piazza on one’s way, on foot, to another destination. Walking into the piazza one is frequently distracted by a friend, market or activity, a casual social collision far more meaningful than any on Facebook or Twitter.
