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October 23, 2005
Street Furniture is no substitute for community
New Urbanism anything but authentic
VIEWPOINT By Michael Ireton
Calgary News and Entertainment Weekly - August 18, 2005
Faux communities aren’t the way to achieve a healthy, happy lifestyle
New Urbanism, Part 2: Building a lie
VIEWPOINT By Michael Ireton
Calgary News and Entertainment Weekly - September 15, 2005
Houses should reflect modern-day reality, not false dreams of the past
I read these articles above sometime ago, and placed it on (or rather in) the stacks, no mountains, of "scratch" items I want to share or comment about. The Folsom Blvd. revitalization talk from the city has refreshed them in my mind, although Folsom Blvd. is never really that far from the top of my thoughts. I'm not sure if that's good or bad.
Michael Ireton nails down some thoughts and observations in these articles that I share, vigorously share, and feel are really important for folks in Rancho to think about. The problems on Folsom Blvd. cannot be solved with oldeanders and street furniture, styled light standards and landscaped medians.
Infrastructure isn't the problems, people are the problem.
No amount of TEA-whatever funding will make up for the disconnect between Rancho's leadership and the neighborhoods of La Loma/West La Loma, White Rock, Mills Park/ Croetto and Le Ann Drive.
At some point, Rancho's leaders have to accept responsibility not only for the services the city government provides for the "physical city", but for the "human city" as well.
I doubt that today's city council will ever be capable of that. Their preoccupation with protecting the interests of the Sundridge and Rio del Oro investors will be at the expense of, as they call it, "Riverside Rancho". Folsom Blvd. and it's "revitalization" will be for a future city council to tackle. The mission of this council, for at least three of them, is to make a pleasant presentation, with the appropriate garnish for the eye, but not to make changes in the menu.
The author skirts the term, but I'll use it; they are trying to manufacture a sense of community; one that either isn't there, or will supplant the one that is, the one that voted in cityhood, the one that made this council possible.
Memorable quotes that brought certain council members to mind:
Part 1:
The solutions the two groups arrived at could not be more different. For CIAM, it was the tower in the park with broad "efficient" streets between them. For the CNU, it’s narrow gridded streets lined with trees, front porches and picket fences. But both attempts are flawed in precisely the same way – a bedrock belief that built form can heal wounded psyches and magically create that oh-so-elusive thing called "community" (in itself a highly problematic term).
Part 2:
McKenzie Towne and many other "New Urbanist" projects like it throughout North America do nothing to reduce automobile dependency. They just try to hide it by putting garages on lanes at the backs of building lots so the front streetscapes can display those precious gingerbreaded front porches and pretend to be something they’re not. One could also argue that the rigidly gridded street pattern New Urbanism prefers (nay, insists upon) actually increases the amount of vehicular roadway, and therefore impermeable surface, in a neighbourhood. These are not the kinds of things that advance the cause of sustainability. Paul Hawken, the retailer/environmentalist who wrote The Ecology of Commerce, summarizes sustainability as "doing more with less." Dare I say this statement has more in common with modernist (boo, hiss) Mies Van der Rohe’s assertion that "less is more" than it does with the suburbs in disguise that represent much of the output of New Urbanism?Those front porches and all the other stylistic pretences of New Urbanism and/or Neo-Traditionalism in the service of nostalgia for a past that only ever existed on movie and television screens is mere set dressing. To insist on Victorian, Colonial or Georgian wrappers around houses brimming with stainless steel appliances, plasma screen TVs, iPods, home computing networks, cat-5 wiring and every other expression and "necessity" of modern living inside is nothing more than going up to the attic and playing dress-up with great-grandma’s old clothes. It denies what the house is – a dwelling for 21st century people. It is fundamentally dishonest – a lie told to make people feel comforted and less threatened by whatever it is about the big, bad modern world that terrifies them. It is infinitely more authentic and honest to build houses and neighbourhoods that are real reflections of the time in which they were created and a visual expression of the "character" of their present-day habitation and use. But Leon Krier has said, "even one modernist building is enough to destroy the spirit" of a New Urbanist project, so I guess honesty and authenticity are out of the question and nostalgia wins the day. Gee, that’s swell.
Posted by cystdog at October 23, 2005 11:02 PM
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