City on the Hill: Ideals and Realities in Urban Design
Lime -- Friday, September 05, 2003 -- 08:42:44 PMWhat does the ideal city look like? Why aren't there any?
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Ann Arbor comes close. Few "depressed" areas. The bustling university scene bleeds in to the incredibly walkable downtown. There are lots of places to sit outside and eat during the summer. Good chefs are drawn there. There is plenty of park space. Sports fans and arts fans live in relative harmony. It's too damn cold, though.
Ann Arbor is good in a lot of ways. But in order to get to a decent grocery store that doesn't charge $0.75 for a single pack of ramen noodles, you're headed to the land of large parking lots. (But then even when I lived there, I was fussy about grocery stores) And in typical college town fashion, they also have an affordable housing problem.
Seemed like a lot of service workers there ended up having to commute from Ypsilanti, which required a car.
Oh, and I just saw Lina's message in Where Should I Put It -- sorry Lina! I had seen talk about creating this for a while, but no one had, so I thought I'd get it going so the conversation could move out of the obesity thread.
I've always thought this is a fascinating topic. I hate most of the neighborhoods around us, the DC suburbs, mostly because they're just not pretty. Too sprawly, too many strip malls, everything new looking with boring architecture. Our local library looks like a prison. And this is a very rich county. I've never understood it.
Now that Alex is gone, I've been thinking about moving to DC, but I'm not sure I'm up for the crowds and the smells and the worries about parking and crime. We're not rich enough to avoid all the grittier aspects of the city. But there's no doubt that nice DC neighborhoods, some of them affordable, are far prettier and more neighborly looking than our suburbs.
I'm subscribing, although the problems here are certainly vastly different (cities emptying out due to population decrease). Very interesting topic.
Could someone please explain what a strip mall is?
Strip malls are connected stores that all face the street. They typically have one or two "anchor" stores and a line of smaller shops, and of course, the expansive parking lot to serve all the stores. They're ugly, but necessary.
Oh, those. They always have a card shop and a laundromat, don't they, and are usually called Something Plaza?
I am lucky to live in one of the few European countries where local councils usually oppose shopping centres of any kind. Whenever anyone wants to build a factory outlet centre or anything resembling a mall, there's public outrage and much wailing and gnashing of teeth from local shopowners, so the plans are usually turned down. As a result, inner cities and town centres of even smallish places are interesting places to shop in. In a survey done about two years ago, Munich turned out to have the highest density of owner-run, non-chain shops in all of Europe.
We live right next to a huge supermarket, but I never take any business there, as I much prefer to support the smaller shops (but then, I can afford to).
Hi Lime! This is a good place for the topic, too.
In the other thread it came out that there are those of us that think that pedestrian-friendly development would be a good thing, but so little of new development is set up threat way. Instead of a mix of business and residential buildings we get Offices over here in the Office Park, Retail over here in the Retail Plaza (be it a mall, "Avenue" of more upscale chains, or a collection of strip malls along a busy highway), and people live over here in the Subdivision (apartments here, townhouses the next street over, single-story single-family houses next, and then multi-level multi-garage single-family houses last). All of these separate areas are divided by four-lane highways that rarely have sidewalks that would encourage people to walk from Home to Work to Shopping.
Why is this? J Ross had a theory in the other thread, which basically boiled down to zoning and developers just build what the people want. But is this really true?
J Ross had a theory in the other thread, which basically boiled down to zoning and developers just build what the people want. But is this really true?
I varies from place to place, but yes "the people" have a huge impact on what is eventually built. I've gone to several "information gathering sessions" with the developers down the street from us and a number of things that came up in those meetings were worked into the plans. Not all of course (the lady who wanted a big greenspace was tilting at windmills) but a number of them.
The pedestiran-friendly movement always cracks me up because of the way things have turned out in our pedestiran-friendly neighborhoods here in Madison. Monroe St. was the most memorable. They HAD a small grocery. It was a good one. It went under. While it was going under, the neighborhood had meeting after meeting about "What will we do? We NEED a neighborhood grocery! Oh this is terrible!" They bought all the refreshments for their meetings at a big old supermarket anchoring a mall. They still don't seem to understand why the neighborhood grocery went away.
Hey Liadan, can you update me on what has happened with the Middleton Hills development?
Anyway, I do agree that "the people" can have an impact on what gets built. That's what charettes are all about. But I know that grand plans get scaled back because of other concerns, like density (too much or not enough), street widths (gotta be wide enough for those bigass emergency vehicles), that sort of thing.
DC's got some great neighborhoods that are walkable and a good public transportation grid. Since you aren't having to worry about public schools anymore, I'd say go for it!
And I'd like to come out and defend the concept of the supermarket here. Yes, it's got the evil large parking lot attached, but it offers a wide variety of goods at lower prices than what you can find at the neighborhood smaller shops, hich tend to be glorified convenience stores. And the typical American doesn't want to have to and doesn't have the time to shop like a European person: small trips to the stores every day. They want to be able to make one trip a week and get everything they need in one fell swoop.
There is a grocery store (albeit a sucky Winn Dixie) is walkable/bikeable for the able-bodied people in my development, but there are only a handful of people who will walk or bike to it because most of the rest of them are doing a full cart grocery run, and don't want to have to figure out how to haul all that a half mile back home.
I've always lived in the suburbs (except for my past 7 years in a very small town), and don't have any desire to live within walking distance of a grocery store. Even if it was only two blocks away from me I would be inclined to take my car, to transport the kids and purchases, rather than try to wrangle them all down a sidewalk. Sometimes I feel like I must be missing the cool gene, that would make me want to shop at small overpriced specialty stores. Give me a sprawling suburb, with lots of good shopping (even strip malls) that I can drive to in about 10 minutes - that way the stores and their shoppers don't encroach on my homelife.
We are moving to Katy, TX next month, and I'm very excited about it. Just as I described, there is lots of shopping and restaurants right off I-10, easily 5-10 minutes from my new house. The house itself is nestled in a bunch of neighborhoods of similar houses. My kids will be able to walk or bike to school, the library and the local pool. I'm much more concerned with their ability to walk places, since they will have the need and opportunity to do so.
betsifur, you are indeed fortunate that you will be living somewhere that has places that your kids can get to under their own power. That is, in my opinion, a major failing of many new developments: they are completely unsuitable for those who are unable to drive due to age (kids) or physical problems (typically elderly).
I grew up in a small (>2,500) town, but I rarely did much walking because my family lived in a subdivision right at the citylimit. There weren't any sidewalks there, but since the traffic was local and very light it wasn't a big deal. We kids just rode our bikes all over it, and took a schoolbus to school. I was very envious of my peers who lived in town and could go to the drugstore or supermarket by themselves to get themselves some candy after school. In highschool we moved to the closest big town (10,000), and this time we lived downtown. Since I didn't drive then I walked pretty much everywhere - school (over a mile away), library, cinema, stores, friends houses. That was good. I went to college in Chicago and still lived the pedestrian lifestyle. Did so in Madison, too (although we did have a car by the end which made grocery shopping SO much easier!). I've been living in a suburb now for about a year and I find myself much more car dependent than I've ever been, and while I've adjusted I'd still rather be living like I did in Chicago. Of course, I abhor the big house/big yard look, and I genuinely like seeing different types of buildings on a block.
Any other fans of Jane Jacobs here?
We couldn't go anywhere under our own power, either. I grew up in a fairly rural area, on a dead end road off of a busy highway. We were allowed to ride our bikes up and down the dead end road, but it didn't go anywhere, and we were not allowed to ride on the highway, even in high school. Actually, I wasn't allowed to ride my bike on the highway in high school, my brother eventually was. (Not that I'm still bitter, or anything.)
The girls can't walk anywhere from where we are now, either. But in a few years they'll be old enough to take the buses places.
It's not so hard for a kid if the kid isn't particularly literary. But have you noticed how so many beloved kids' classics have sort of urban settings? You notice this disconnect between the life of the kids in the books, who can walk to the library and the deli and the baker etc., and your own life, where you can walk or bike for miles and miles and only see houses much like your own, and at the very most, a 7-11.
In the USA a supermarket operates on a 2% profit margin. You need to do a huge volume of business to make that work. No neighborhood store, even if it could (which it can't) match the supermarket's distribution efficiency can come close to competing on prices. So the only place they can stay in business is where people are rich enough to pay a 10 or 15% premium for a fancy local food store or where a lot of people don't own cars, so a store they can walk to is almost neccesary.
Similarly a store like WalMart operates on a 5% profit margin, and again has a legendary warehouse and distribution system. Local stores just can't compete in any situation where people care about the price of the goods. Until people can convince these chains to build stores in walking neighborhoods (and they are moving into the cities now, so if that works well for them it may happen) there just aren't going to be many new walking neighborhoods built, because the commercial development won't come to them.
So the only place they can stay in business is where people are rich enough to pay a 10 or 15% premium for a fancy local food store or where a lot of people don't own cars
This IS the Monroe St. neighborhood.
They abandoned their neighborhood grocery in favor of the BIG! Sentry! Supermarket! which had a Great Harvest Bread Co. and a sushi bar inside. (Translation: they are still shopping snooty and expensive, just not local.) Then they got all up-in-arms when Walgreens wanted to move into the empty building. (Ack! A chain store!) Then they shot down a women's fitness club. (Ack! Outsiders might come to our neighborhood IN THEIR CARS! Cars are almost as evil as chain stores.) Now they are all in a lather about the blight of this empty building. (Urban decay! URBAN DECAY!! )
The Middleton Hills thing is interesting too. They had a small, specialty food store that went under. Now they are screaming because the developer wants to put a Copps Grocery in. (Chain store! Ack!)
Currently it stands at Residents: completely pissed off and tossing out suggestions like a co-op. (Yeah. Monroe St. has been trying to start one for the past three years. Good luck with that.) Developer: I'm tired of this empty store front, you want a grocery, I'm offering you one. The original developer died and his son is much more "cold reality" than his father "the visionary". I think the planning is all up to city approval right now. I'll try to dig up more details later.
I guess I tended to go more for the rural pioneers side of kids lit. (that, or books about horses and summer camps) My parents house on Richmond St. had a giant backyard that seemed huge as a prairie, and you could pick through the blackberry bushes and pretend you were Caddie Woodlawn.
What I get wistful about is that you can't afford to build ornate giant buildings anymore because those sorts of craftsmen now demand living/middle class wages. There's something magical about the places with corinthian columns, or gargoyles, or ornate spires that you just don't get with 98% of modern architecture. The old buildings just have this wonderful sense of place and history and sturdiness the new ones can't match.
The area I grew up in was 50-80s suburban construction just inside the city limits. So the land of quarter acre and half acre lots.
I've seen talk about linking childhood obesity to suburbia, but am thinking that correlation is fairly weak, thinking back about how we really took advantage of the open spaces when I was a child.
The backyard was a place where you played tag in summer and built your own luge run down the hill in the winter (and you got a ton of exercise hauling the sled back up the hill). Ice skating was done at the neighbor's pond in the winter. Half the homes had a basketball hoop in the driveway, and they were used on a regular basis. And during the summer, you'd get kicked out of the house after lunch, and unless it was raining, you weren't allowed back inside until dinner time unless it started raining or you had to use the bathroom.
There were no stores close by, so we'd have to ride our bikes 3 miles or so one way to get to the Stop and Rob for candybars and cans of pop. Swim practice was a three mile bike each way to practice, since I'd have to stop and pick up Amy C. on the way.
But attitudes change, and we're more protective of the kids than we used to be. Even though the traffic isn't much greater, I can't see parents these days letting kids bike along the roads we used to ride, the pond is not judged too dangerous to skate on, and you can't get away with telling your kids to just stay out of the house for six hours in the summer anymore, it seems.
We had a fun town planning meeting at which the council a) agreed to give Wal-Mart mega tax breaks to come to town b)passed a resolution to revitalize Main Street.
I often notice things, sometimes quite minor ones, that make a difference in people's behavior out of all proportion to their size. We live in a townhouse condo complex on a hilltop. Below, not half a mile from the most distant condo as the crow flies, is the town's main shopping strip, with ShopRite, pizza place, Italian deli and ravioli store, Chinese restaurant, dollar store, shoe store, hairdresser, dry cleaner, Radio Shack, and candy and news store. There's also a couple of banks and the fast food.
Had access to the condos been built on a long, shallow slope, with sidewalks- for which there was plenty of room- it would be both easy and pleasant to walk to the strip. But they chose to put it a quarter-mile away along a sidewalkless access road, and the entrance road itself goes straight up a steep hill, also without sidewalks. Almost no one ever walks except the teenagers, who have a shortcut through the woods behind the American Legion hall.
Now, my perfect world in development and shopping terms would operate more like the 1920s than anything since. I'm biased as hell. But the thing is, all that aside, here's a situation in which two utterly 21st-century concepts, a condo complex and a shopping strip, COULD have been made to function in a comparatively pedestrian-friendly way. It's these things that really frustrate me, because they're the result of poor planning rather than ideological disagreement.
(Lina, I loved The Death and Life of Great American Cities.)
Mine's currently out of the house...two doors over, at his buddy's townhome, where they're probably playing Nintendo or something.
But his buddy's parents actually let them inside. For us, there was the Evil Adult Conspiracy going on where no one let us in.
One thing I DO find wonderful about townhouse development is its kid-friendliness. The kids play all over the common areas, there's no worry about whose lawn is off-limits, they can be seen from the house. If I were in charge of multiple-unit housing the townhouse model would be the one I would push.
catling, a lot of us actually do that here, and the way things are laid out makes it pretty workable.
Occasionally, they do ride bikes, skateboard, pogo-stick, run around and explore. But currently it's up in the 80s with 100% humidity. And the wooded areas close by tend to have "Posted" signs on them.
Grass? This is the south. All grass is heavily infested with chiggers and redbugs. Sit down for five minutes, let alone roll about on it, and you're scratching yourself raw for the rest of the week.
Liadan, sounds like Madison is the same as it ever was. I used to go to the Monroe St. grocery store on a regular basis. That, and the Willy St. Co-op (before they moved to their American Legion digs). Both were a bit of a hike for me. I definately want to check out Middleton Hills next time I'm in town (perhaps next summer). On paper it has the stuff I really love in a community, speaking from an aesthetical perspective: narrow streets, small setbacks, porches, trees. Kinda like the near East side.
Brigit, yes, that sort of shortsightedness irks me to no end. Times when things could EASILY be made pedestrian friendly and they aren't, well, why? I wish I knew why this happened so frequently. I too like the idea of common grassy areas in new townhouse developments. I lived in a rowhouse in Baltimore and there weren't such things, unless you counted the public parks. Sure, there were backyards, but so tiny that I rarely ever saw kids playing in them. Public space is one of the things that Jane Jacobs discusses in her book, and it made me look at public spaces I've seen in various cities with new eyes. For one thing, I can tell you that a flat expanse of concrete that takes up much a city block, has no shade, few trees, and few businesses is just not going to work in Baltimore as a plaza. Nope nope nope. This particular plaza had some proposals for improvement last year, and I'm curious if anything will happen for the better.
catling, I know what you mean about the big ornate buildings of decades past. I could see living in an apartment in such a building, but a whole house? Not so much. At least not if it is really big. It seems to me (based on the open/model houses I've visited in the past several years) that the look is BIG but without the quality of construction.
I've skimmed it, TAFKA, but what really stood out to me was the notion that Mies and his ilk did away with ornament, preferring the strict utitily of the materials like I-beams for their buildings. Well, hah! I say. I used to work quite near a Mies building and whaddya know, there were I-beams stuck on the side as decoration. I could tell they had no structural use because work was being done on the building and those decorative beams went away and the building has stayed up.
Yes, they did use the I-beams as decoration--I think that's in the book too. I remember reading also that all kinds of people--plasterers and whatnot--actually cursed the names of the modern architects, because, naturally, they never did so well again.
Even if there were no chiggers, the grass down here is coarse and unwelcoming. When we vacationed on Mackinac Island in Michigan, one of the great joys was rolling down a hill of grass. Soft, sweet smelling grass is as much a novelty to my kids as snow.
I meant the big ornate public buildings: libraries and schools and city halls and such. I went to post-1950s schools, and always loved getting to visit the older school buildings that looked like castles and had all kinds of twists and turns and interesting places to them.
These days, try to build anything more elaborate than a quonset hut, and people start bitching about wasted tax dollars for the project 80% of the time.
(and be careful about rolling down the grassy hill. I rolled over 3-4 bees doing that once, and that was not a fun experience)