From cc9541303baebc3f1085af956beb76588132656c Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Phil Crosby Date: Fri, 27 Sep 2024 09:24:17 -0700 Subject: [PATCH] Suburban nation WIP --- .../suburban nation - andres duany.md | 201 ++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 201 insertions(+) diff --git a/architecture/suburban nation - andres duany.md b/architecture/suburban nation - andres duany.md index 142d6dc..a7e9565 100644 --- a/architecture/suburban nation - andres duany.md +++ b/architecture/suburban nation - andres duany.md @@ -1,5 +1,11 @@ # Suburban Nation - Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, Jeff Speck +## Gems + +* "Americans may have the finest private realm in the developed world, but our public realm is + brutal. Confronted by repetitive subdivisions, treeless collector roads, and vast parking lots, + the citizen finds few public spaces worth visiting." + ## Intro * (Is "good growth" possible? NIMBYism is understandable because for most cities and suburban @@ -36,3 +42,198 @@ * "Since most of this motion takes place in singly occupied automobiles, even a sparsely populated area can generate the traffic of a much larger traditional town." * There's a high pavement:building ratio. +* Sprawl is a result of well-intentioned public policies starting in the mid 1930s. + * Mortgage loans for 11M homes. + * Interstate highway program. + * Neglect of public transit. +* As people moved out to the suburbs, so did retail, and then offices, so they could be closer to + the people. +* Segregation of use through zoning became popular in the 1800s when factories were segregated from + residential. This improved cities, because it resolved incompatible use. But then segregation was + then inappropriately applied to all uses -- even compatible ones -- by city planners. +* In affluent areas, the sprawl can be executed with beauty, e.g. lots of greenery. + * "This raises a fundamental point: the problem with suburbia is not that it is ugly. The problem + with suburbia is that, in spite of all its regulatory controls, it is not functional: it simply + does not efficiently serve society or preserve the environment." +* "The virgin sidewalk -- the physical embodiment of sprawl's guilty conscience -- reveals the true + failure of suburbia, a landscape in which automobile use is a prerequisite to social viability." +* Planning codes are just words, no diagrams. They "have no clear picture of what they want their + communities to be. They are not imagining a place that they admire, or buildings that they hope to + emulate. Rather, all they seem to imagine is what they *don't* want: no mixed uses, no slow-moving + cars, no parking shortages, no overcrowding. Such prohibitions do not a city make." + +## The devil is in the details (chap 2) + +* "More than any other factor, the perception of excessive traffic is what causes citizens to ake up + arms against growth in suburban communities." + * (This is not unreasonable. While cars provide mobility, their side effect is noise, ugliness, + and a lack of peace and safety on the street. If these side effects can't be directly addressed, + given the nature of cars, then less traffic does make the town a lot nicer.) +* Sprawl has more traffic because more people are forced to take cars (avg 13 trips per household per + day) and the organization forces all traffic through a central road -- a collector. +* Traditional neighborhoods are organized as webs, which reduce demand on collector roads. +* Retail: corner stores vs convenience stores + * Retail in suburbia often takes the form of a loathed drive-in Quick Mart. + * A corner store, by contrast, is desirable and raises property values. + * They sell the same things. The difference is the "building typology." The corner store is built + like house in the same style as the neighborhood and is situated directly against the sidewalk. + Convenience stores are all glass, surrounded by asphalt, with a parking lot between the store + and the street. And usually harsh fluorescent lighting. It puts cares before pedestrians.the +* Shopping centers + * Main street is a superior model to shopping centers. On main st, the retail is on the ground, + and there can be apartments and offices above the retail. Parking is in the rear, in garages. + The architecture is harmonious with the town. People can choose to live in the same neighborhood + as their office. + * "Credit for many mian-street revivals is due to the National Trust for Historic Preservation's + Main Street Program, which provides funding and advice to communities across the country." + * (It's cool that this is a thing.) +* In the standard suburban office park, there's "offices and parking, but nothing to do at + lunchtime." +* Having offices on main street contributes to the viability of shops, because the workplace + provides daytime customers. +* Office parks are incredibly boring places to walk, because it's all parking lot. It's the worst + place to have a walking 1:1. +* Public open space requirements "have been reduced to a set of regulations that are primarily + statistical. These requirements say little about the configuration and quality of open space." + * Planning codes should provide as much detail and guidance for open space as they do for parking lots... +* Open space is often residual: it's made up of extra space between clusters of properties, rather + than pooled together intelligently. +* "Sports fields are often designed ease of maintenance rather than for accessibility. As a result, + they tend to be consolidated into excessively large parcels well beyond pedestrian range." +* Duany argues that curved streets and cul-de-sacs create a disorienting environment. + * (That sounds reasonable. But I would guess the intent is a more organic and interesting + landscape, where walking uncovers more behind the bend.) + * The original intention behind these designs seems to have been to discourage strangers cruising + around the neighborhood, to deter crime. +* To combat "boring endless vistas", streets on a grid can be slightly curved, so the view unfolds + as you travel down the street. +* Traffic calming: the practice of using roadway geometry to improve safety. + * "Drivers passing through a well-designed residential neighborhood are made to feel that they are + *borrowing* the street space from the people who live there." + +## The house that sprawl built (chap 3) + +* Private vs public realm + * "Americans may have the finest private realm in the developed world, but our public realm is + brutal. Confronted by repetitive subdivisions, treeless collector roads, and vast parking lots, + the citizen finds few public spaces worth visiting." +* Argues nimbys would embrace growth if they could be shown that it will provide them with a + gratifying public realm. +* On housing "clusters" within a subdivision: "there have always been better and worse + neighborhoods, and the rich have often taken refuge from the poor, but never with such precision." +* The traditional neighborhood was a social condenser. E.g. the housing type might transition + mid-block: apartments on both sides of the street, facing each other. Next to them, mansions on + each side of the street, facing each other. +* "A society is healthier when its diverse members are in daily contact with one another." It's + convenient if your doctor, teacher, and baby sitter are all within a reasonable distance. +* "In a neighborhood, people buy the community first and the house second. The more a place rsembles + an authentic community, the more it is valued, and one hallmark of a real place is variety." +* "The best way to create real variety is to vary ont the architectural style but the building type." + * Superficial variation is not sufficient. It will have a "cookie cutter" feel. + * Cites Georgetown as a good example: the architectural style is consistent, but it feels varied + because of the varied building types. + * "It is often the consistent use of a single style that makes the integration of different + building types possible." +* Mixed-use housing + * "Upstairs apartments [over retail] provide customers for the shops, activity for the street, and + nighttime surveillance for the neighborhood. They also represent one of the most economical ways + to provide housing, since the land and infrastructure costs are covered by the shops." + * Retail is usually only single story, and single story doesn't adequately define street space. + Apartments above the retail gives the buildings needed height. +* Affordable housing + * It should not look different from regular housing. "The last thing the poor need is a home that + stigmatizes them as such." + * "It should be distributed among market-rate housing as sparsely as possible in order to avoid + neighborhood blight and reinforce positive behavior." E.g. a 1-in-10 insertion rate. + +## The physical creation of society (chap 4) + +* "Community cannot form in the absence of communal space." +* "In the suburbs, time normally spent in the physical public realm is now spent in the automobile, + which is a private space as well as a potentially sociopathic device." +* Andres argues that driving around in "isolation chambers" has caused a decline in conversation, + politics, and getting along with others in the community. +* Why do people visit Disney Land? Partly it's because it actually provides a pleasant, pedestrian-friendly + public space that most people lake in their hometowns. +* Traffic design + * Streets have become "traffic sewers" rather than designed equally for car use and pedestrian + use. + * Streets were widened with the advent of the car to increase throughput, but this widening makes + them less friendly for pedestrians. + * Access requirements for fire departments are too onerous, and meeting these requirements + unreasonably compromises the neighborhood street design. + * "They put more weight on fire rescue than on the prevention of injury in general." Car + accidents are far more common and deadly than fires. + * Neighborhoods should be designed with narrow streets to encourage traffic calming. + * Speed limits signs don't work. People will not drive slowly unless they feel unsafe speeding. + * "The engineers' strict adherrence to their manuals is actually promising; rather than convincing + the engineers to fundamentally rethink their approach, we need only amend the manuals in order + to reform the profession." +* Prerequisites for street life + * Meaningful destinations easily accessible by foot. + * Eyes on the street: "in order to discourage crime, a street space must be watched over by + buildings with doors and windows facing it." + * Architectural enclosure: the buildings along the street should make the pedestrians feel like + they are "held within a space"; an outdoor living room. + * (It seems to me that there's a tension between feeling like you're in nature vs. an urban + setting. Taller buildings and narrow streets deliver a cozy urban feeling, but is this the only + way? Can the neighborhood instead feel like walking through a park?) +* Street trees + * When the houses themselves fail to create a well-defined space, because they're spaced too far + apart, evenly spaced street trees should be used. "The trees narrow the space and provide a + natural value that contributes to the pedestrian's sense of enclosure and comfort." + * Andres argues that landscape designers cluster trees in natural arrangements found in the + wilderness, because a row of trees would be too boring. But the trees don't do anything to + define space, so they're not helping the outdoor space feel more intimate or room-like. +* The problem with garages on the facades of houses: "architecture that fails to express the + presence of humans is unsatisfying to the pedestrian." +* Alleys are a useful dumping ground for all of the things which aren't neat. They allow the front + of the street to be clean. + * "By handling many of the neighborhood's underground utilities, alleys allow streets to be + narrower and to be planted with trees, which becomes difficult when water, sewer, gas, + electricity, cable, and telephone are all placing demands on the front right-of-way." +* "The endless repetition from lot to lot of the same house type makes walking utterly unrewarding." + +## The American transportation mess (chap 5) + +* Highways should connect towns but not pass through them. Cities should not grow along highways. + * In Western Europe, "most highways provide views of uninterrupted countryside." +* Induced traffic + * Adding more lanes causes people to drive more, such that in the long run, the traffic congestion + remains the same. + * The reason is that latent demand for taking more and longer trips is huge, and always saturates + new supply of traffic capacity. + * "Increased traffic capacity makes longer commutes less burdensome, and as a result, people are + willing to live farther and farther from their workplace." + * (Andres didn't seem to acknowledge that building more roads does give people what they want; + it's not wasted investment. If people can work farther away from their homes, their job options + are much improved.) +* People may demand driving because many aspects of it are a "free good." They don't directly pay + for roads, parking spots, and traffic infrastructure. +* "Government subsidies for highways and parking alone amount to between 8 and 10 percent of our + gross national product." + +## Sprawl and the developer (chap 6) + +* "If what you are selling is privacy and exclusivity, then every new house is a degradation of the + amenity. However, if what you are selling is community, then every new house is an enhancement of + the asset." - Vince Graham +* "When offered true community, buyers require no other amenity, not even location." +* Homebuilders are looking for gimmicks to differentiate their product against the competition. None + of them focus on the neighborhood's context enough to offer "community" as a selling point. + +## The victims of sprawl (chap 7) + +* Children lose their autonomy in suburbia; their mobility is to the edge of the subdivision. +* Typically, one parent has to become the parent's personal chauffeur (soccer mom). +* Cul-de-sac kid: "the child who lives as a prisoner of a thoroughly safe and unchallenging + environment." +* Andres argues that kids living in suburbs contribute to teen auto deaths (because they must drive + to achieve independence) and teen suicides, because of the isolating effect of suburbs. +* Driving skill declines with age. The dependence on autos makes the elderly "nonviable." + * "As they lose their driver's licenses, the location of that house puts them out of reach of + their physical and social needs." + * The ideal setup for the elderly i sa mixed use pedestrian friendly neighborhood. +* "Eighty percent of all suburban automobile trips have nothing to do with work at all, but are + short drives to places that used to be accessible on foot, such as shops, schools, parks, and + friends' houses."