Regional and Urban Design Committee

I'm still hoping someone will respond with a discussion of fundamental urban values important to folks other than architects and planners.  I also hope that the general populace will become more aware of global environmental issues and the carbon footprint of the typical contemporary American lifestyle, and vote with their feet to relocate to more dense, efficient enclaves; I am not, however, holding my breath for either outcome.

First, old habits die hard.  It is too easy to stick with established patterns, for everybody, movers and shakers and ordinary folk alike.  I have not yet seen develop a consistent thematic response by the AIA, APA, or anybody else to the current condition of low density urban habitat except either, 1), to wring collective hands over environmental destruction and spout technical solutions that serve higher, more sustainable densities, as though sustainability were the only salient issue, or 2), to defend suburban sprawl as representing the apex of human civilization. 

Second, what reason is there to relocate to a maximally efficient urban milieu for largely technical reasons that require a decision of conscience not directly related to personal lifestyle issues?  For the average layperson, our discussions must seem remote and cooly objective indeed, exhortations to adopt a different, putatively more responsible 
conviction for which "green" architects and planners have a largely theoretical affinity themselves. 

The smug assumption by urban designers that they know the answers to urban design rings hollow when the projects we see in the professional press typically feature the usual "efficiency" jargon, and zippy graphics that appear to exist for their own sake as much as to ballyhoo high-tech and grandiose solutions which dwarf their presumed inhabitants in scale and extent.  One wonders just who has their hands on the machinery of programming in both the real and theoretical examples. 

I hope my intransigence on this subject is at least a little irritating.  Let's get excited and have a real discussion of the value fundamentals of why and for whom we should build cities, or parts of cities, favorable to their inhabitants ability to sustain communities rather than the more metrics-oriented discussion of sustainable communities based on "efficiency".

I think the technical tools for designing and building compact infrastructure exist and are at hand.  What is missing is a philosophic rationale for the form of that infrastructure other than a technical one.  I think we need bottom-up rather than top-down integration of the technical and human issues without diminishing either.  Perhaps we can then create a discussion that Mr. and Mrs. Suburbia can not only understand but also relate to.

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Gary Collins AIA
Principal
Gary R. Collins, AIA
Jacksonville OR
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Hello Gary -
Having spent years trying to rationally convince lay audiences of the advantages of more urban living, I have become a strong adherent to the quote "People don't change when they see the light, they change when they feel the heat". So, 1) as gas prices continue to rise, as they must, to price points above people's ability to comfortably pay for long commutes, 2) as suburban real estate values continue to decline (since many of the far suburbs are actually where most foreclosed properties are), and 3) as suburban residential property tax rates continue to increase because often suburbs have only a small commercial property tax base to subsidize residential rates, more close-in or urban living will start attracting more and more people. And, as an earlier commentator pointed out, better urban school systems are a necessary incentive, or even pre-requisite, for some families to consider moving back in. I have found the issues of better achievable 'sustainability' in compact urban communities an unconvincing argument in most instances. Lifestyle, schools, and pocketbook issues trump sustainability arguments all the time.

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Lawrence Bluestone
Principal
Bluestone Planning Group
Cambridge MA
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