Committee on Design

I have "heard" this too. Perhaps an "urban myth" but true for my family and my father too. I like the idea of a limit of patience and endurance being the determinant across time.  On the other hand, a true pleasure of life is the luxury of walking to work which I did for 13 years in Milwaukee even in the middle of winter - about 20 min.

New topic.  Books or articles about DEsign in urban design - the principles underlying urban design.  Ed Bacon's "Design of Cities" is a start. (I thouroughly enjoyed his class at Penn but wasdisappointed our model of Piazza Navona did not make it into the book).  The case studies in "Townscape" are useful. Lynch provides a vocabulary for describing urban form - especially in "Image of the City". Other (more recent) sources?

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[Tim] [McGinty] [AIA]
[Principal]
[MCGINTY]
[Boulder] [CO]

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Architect Tim McGinty, AIA 

Dear Tim, 

I think "urban myth" captures the essence of this take on travel time. A modern man must have walked the streets of ancient Rome with a stopwatch -- if any effort was made at all. (I'm assuming the distance traveled in the time measured does not apply to horses and chariots.) If anywhere close to being true, it indicates that endurance still limits patience to a 30-45 minute commute -- in many cases; but a Roman would be amazed at the distance we can travel in the same time period. The improvement in city design is debatable.  

I'm glad you've read Bacon and Lynch. I am proud to have them on my bookshelf and don't forget Lynch's Site Planning. They were early influences along with James Ormsbee Simonds' book, Landscape Architecture and James Marston Fitch's two volumes entitled, American Building, Part I and II. I should have titled the two editions of my book, The Language of Intensity, but that occurred to me much later and may be too ambiguous. It's attached forecasting software attempts to build on Bacon and Lynch, not to mention many others. (The book could be considered a manual for the software, but with a broader focus.) I had fun putting them on the same shelf while fully recognizing my audacity¹.  

You have put your finger on two sources that have always had my admiration and I mentioned several others. The list is long, but I'd also like to mention Ian McHarg's book, Design with Nature, Oscar Newman's book, Defensible Space, and Yoshinobu Ashihara's book, Exterior Design in Architecture.  

Thanks for the comment and you may be interested in my blog at www.thebuiltdomain.net. 

Regards,

Walter Hosack 

¹ Hosack, Walter M., Land Development Calculations, ed. 2, and attached forecasting software, Development Capacity Evaluation, v2.0 published by The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2009. Also available at Amazon.com and other booksellers
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Walter Hosack
Author
Walter M. Hosack
Dublin OH
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I don't think it's an urban myth issue, as I definitely did read it somewhere when reading about the construct of ancient cities. But it's been too many years for me to recall the source. Having lived in Houston, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York, (and a few small towns) I have definitely experienced nearly every source of transportation you can think of. And I have noticed that whether you are driving an 8 lane freeway or walking to work, the time limits on what can be tolerated are about the same.
NYC has always been ranked number one in the country on transportation design, and I think that's pretty easy to argue because they offer so many different options that all work pretty well for getting around. Their complex overlap of pedestrians, cars, taxis, trains, buses and boats is pretty impressive. I usually managed to walk to work most years I was there. Other times I took the subway. A car was of little use. Not having a car in Texas or California is unthinkable.

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Rich Farris, AIA
Author of "Principles of Creativity, Architecture's Insight to Invention" (Amazon)
Dallas, Texas
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