It was tough but I compiled my top ten quotes from The Geography of Nowhere.  With the addition of a special guest’s favorite at the end, they are…

“…Modernism, which dedicated itself to the worship of machines, to sweeping away all architectural history, all romantic impulses, and to jamming all human aspiration into a plain box.”

“Kenneth Jackson makes the shrewd observation that ‘although the motorcar was the quintessentially private instrument, its owners had to operate it over public spaces.’ “

“I’ll pass over the questions of styling and merchandising that adumbrate the American-Love-Affair-with-the-Car myth, except to suggest that if Americans loved their cars, perhaps it was because the machines allowed them to escape from reality – which raises the more interesting question: Why didAmerica build a reality of terrible places from which people longed to escape?”

“The two elements of the suburban pattern that cause the greatest problems are the extreme separation of uses and the vast distances between things.”

“The public realm suffered in another way with the rise of the automobile. Because the highways were gold-plated with our national wealth, all other forms of public building were impoverished. This is the reason why every town hall built after 1950 is a concrete-block shed full of cheap paneling and plastic furniture, why public schools look like overgrown gas stations, why courthouses, firehouses, halls of records, libraries, museums, post offices, and other civic monuments are indistinguishable from bottling plants and cold-storage warehouses.”

“The unwillingness to think about the public realm of the street in any other term beside traffic shows how little value Americans confer on the pubic realm in general.”

“The average citizen – who went to school in a building modeled on a shoe factory, who works in a suburban office park, who lives in a raised ranch house, who vacations inLas Vegas– would not recognize a building of quality if a tornado dropped it in his yard. But the professional architects, who ought to know better, have lost almost as much ability to discern the good from the bad, the human from the antihuman. The consequence of losing our planning skills is the monotony and soullessness of single-use zoning, which banished the variety that was the essence of our best communities. Most important, we have lost our knowledge of how physically to connect things in our everyday world, except by car and telephone.”

“…to give up mass automobile use. By this, I do not mean an end to all cars but rather, that every individual adult need not make a car trip for every function of living: to go to work, to buy clothes, to have a drink, that every adult need not be compelled to bear the absurd expense of car ownership and maintenance as a requisite of citizenship.”

“This is a good place to consider in some detail why the automobile suburb is such a terrible pattern from human ecology. In almost all communities designed since 1950, it is a practical impossibility to go about the ordinary business of living without a car. …This produces two separate classes of citizens: those who can fully use their everyday environments and those who cannot.” 

“The identification of this extreme individualism of property ownership with all that is sacred in American life has been the source of many of the problems I shall describe in the pages that follow. Above all, it tends to degrade the idea of the public realm, and hence of the landscape tissue that ties together the thousands of pieces of private property that make up a town, a suburb, a state. It also degrades the notion that the private individual has a responsibility to this public realm – or, to put it another way, that the public realm is the physical manifestation of the common good.”

I asked James Howard Kunstler if he would share his favorite comment or quote from the book also:

“We created a land full of scary places and became a nation of scary people.”

“The culture of good place-making…is a body of knowledge and acquired skills.  It is not bred in the bone, and if it is not transmitted from one generation to the next, it is lost.”

A thank you to Professor Mark Schimmenti for introducing this book to me during the Market Square Design Studio in ’99. This book has been very important to me and my career.

The Geography of Nowhere was published originally in 1993. However the contents are just as, if not more so, applicable today and yet also as foreboding (if we don’t make large scale mprovements).

Kunstler begins by writing about a temporary move to the suburbs of Long Island during his childhood. He exploits the irony of the situation in which builders were rapidly bulldozing hundreds of acres for new places with names like North’wood’ and ‘Country’ Estates. This experience helped him to recognize and identify some of the great placemaking elements of other towns and cities in which he lived.

As he moves through 200 years of American settlement patterns and a surge of individualism, with no shortage of detail, we see how the elements that make a community great have been obliterated and even often made illegal.

Following a chapter on architectural history, is the chapter aptly named ‘Joyride’. Kunstler explains that we were blissfully unaware of the long-term influence the automobile would have on shaping our communities and our lives. We quickly grew to love the freedom attainable with the auto. “There was nothing like it before in history; a machine that promised liberation from the daily bondage of place.”

Though he explains that the larger cost may have been “the degradation of urban life caused by enticing the middle class to make their homes outside of town.” Because the automobile became available to the masses, we began to build further and further from the urban core. In addition, there was the emergence of mass home production when American GIs returned home from WWII. Easy mortgages were available with VA and FHA appropriations. These elements spurred a housing industry that “had learned the mass-production techniques of Ford and General Motors.”

What makes the automobile suburb so bad? “In almost all communities designed since 1950, it is a practical impossibility to go about the ordinary business of living without a car.” So it’s rather ironic that we would later use our automobiles to escape the places that we built. And where do we go to escape? Often it’s to the places in which we can’t afford to reside. These are some of the great cities built well before World War II where you may find great streets, walkability, public amenities, and mixed uses. There’s a real correlation between the price of real estate and these elements.

As automobile ownership and dependency increased, mass transit systems went into decline due in large part due to pressure from automakers. “The automobile, a private mode of transport, was heavily subsidized with tax dollars early on, while the nation’s streetcar systems, a public mode of transport, had to operate as private companies, received no public funds, and were saddled with onerous regulations that made their survival economically implausible.”

Kunstler uses his own town of Saratoga Springs, New York, as a case study for ‘How to Mess Up a Town’. Within this, he uses “X and Y Corporations” to represent out-of-town developers of national retailers. He explains that they usually care little or none at all about constructing or preserving a physical relationship with the existing environment and its architectural history. Using the example of a convenience store, he states,

“The officers of the X and Y Corporations,who do not live in x (town), have no vested interest in the upkeep of the 100-year-old shopfront buildings or the Greek Revival houses there. (They may not even know what the town looks like, or a single fact of its history.) Their success is measured strictly by the tonnage of Cheez Doodles and Pepsi Cola they manage to move off their shelves.”

Their presence also eliminates many local operations owned by individuals who in general do care about the upkeep of the town.

The book ends on a more encouraging tone with ‘Better Places’ in which Kunstler summarizes that “…the living arrangement that most Americans think of as ‘normal’ is bankrupting us both personally and at every level of government.” Far too much of our wealth goes to building and upkeeping roads and highways and infrastructure. In this chapter, he profiles organizations, writers, and designers that are working to take us back to better placemaking policies and guidelines.

It is possible to change. It is possible to have better places that accommodate the automobile and consume less of our resources. We’ve seen these charming places before. He says there are basic rules to follow that involve respecting the presence of humans, and paying attention to the details.

The sequel to this book is Home From Nowhere.

Ok here’s another short article from the July 2011 issue of Governing Magazine. Chances are you’ve seen more roundabouts and traffic circles over the past decade than ever before. The mayor of Carmel, Indiana envisions a city free of traffic lights by replacing them with roundabouts and traffic circles. Carmel was to have 60 intersection roundabouts by the end of 2011 with another 35 planned.

I like roundabouts. Those that were installed in downtown Windermere a few years ago have been very beneficial to all who drive in and walk in Windermere. I believe that many drivers out this way still need to be educated about maneuvering (and reducing speed) through some of the larger multi-lane traffic circles, like the one on Lakeside Village Lane/Reams Road. However IF treated correctly, such as placing an area of refuge by way of a median, even these can provide easier crossing access to pedestrians as this gives them narrower expanses to cross rather than a sea of traffic lanes.

Trying to get through my magazine stack, I found this article in the July 2011 issue of Governing Magazine. Yes, slightly behind.

Because receiving multiple volumes of unwanted yellow page books each year is a pet peeve of mine, I found it interesting. Even though I have followed the instructions to opt-out for multiple consecutive years, I still receive them. I usually mutter something under my breath and take them straight to the recycling bin at my back door. Except for this year. I delivered them to the phone company’s substation. Surely they enjoyed picking up their own litter the next morning.

Anyway, the article mentioned explains that the City of San Francisco has banned the indiscriminate and unsolicited distribution of yellow page books. Unless a resident is home to physically accept the books or provides prior approval by phone, mail, or sticky note, they are not to be delivered. This is the way it should work.

Last year alone, San Francisco received 1.6 million yellow page books for its 800,000 citizens, or roughly 700,000 punds of waste. What’s then thrown costs the city $1,000,000 each year to process.

Yellow page books are a dying model. Until the phone companies change this method, we all deal with their waste whether we ever open the books or not.

During the January 10, 2012 Orange County Board of County Commissioners meeting, District 1 Commissioner Scott Boyd raised an issue related to water management that I found particularly interesting. He showed an aerial photo of a section of Horizon West within walking distance from my home. This track of land consists of a residence and a pick-your-own blueberry operation. The blueberry operation was new last spring, but it seems to have already become part of the community. In fact, I already look forward to taking my kids to pick this spring.

Once the issue of whether reclaimed water can be used was answered (it can subsurface, but it can’t touch the fruit), the question was raised as to whether other types of agricultural commodities, like blueberries, should qualify for the same discounted rate for reclaimed water as citrus. Should there be a standard agricultural rate for this water?

Don’t know where this will lead, but the general response was positive that standardization should occur if at all possible. Regardless, I’m hoping to see continued support for these types of endeavors in our community, and especially right here in Horizon West. The demand for locally produced foods is certainly growing. This benefits the local community. Plus less energy and fuel are used to transport, process, and package foods that are used locally.

“In the future, when we practice a different kind of agriculture than the heavily subsidized, petroleum-intensive, single-crop system we follow today, farming may be down-scaled and regionalized, more food grown and consumed locally.” - James Howard Kunstler in The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America’s Man-Made Landscape

A couple of days ago, I attended the Orange County 2012 Redevelopment Conference which featured some great speakers.  These were my favorite comments as well as some interesting statements:

Galina Tachieva:

• Why do we need sprawl repair?  Exurban is too expensive to build and not sustainable environmentally.
• Must rethink the model for health and well-being.  We’ve been deprived of the simple and natural activity of walking due to the way we have built our communities.  We’ve built in a grand scale since the introduction of the car, but we need to build on a human scale.
• More urban environments are being sought by younger generations. (a recurring theme)
• Think of long-term – how will the next generation benefit?
• Higher density desired by younger actually performs better – more in municipal taxes, environmentally, well-being
• Most foreclosures in the exurbs. Affordability is wiped out by the long commute.
• Wall Street is using walkscore.com as an underwriting tool.
• Streets and thoroughfares have a social function, and we have forgotten this.
• Arterials to be adapted when go they through certain areas.  Fast traffic kills real estate. (Harping on it, but think CR 535 through Lakeside Village).  Repair slowly.  Start with landscaping and expand sidewalk.

Gregg Logan:

• Gen Y vs. Boomers make decisions about where to live and choice of real estate product based on difference reasons.  Young people are seeking more urban environments, or is it that they dislike driving and appreciate convenience?
• During a recession, the size of the American home decreases (new homes starts) and as soon as an uptick occurs, the size increases again.  We saw this is 2011.
• Much of home ownership growth will be homes without children and/or single people.  They don’t necessarily want an attached home, but what kind of products are we providing them?  How do we make their choices more desirable?  Smaller homes on smaller lots?
• When given the choices from rural to suburban with housing only to suburban with a mix of housing and businesses to denser options, the overwhelming top choice was suburban with a mix of housing and businesses.  People are looking for better suburbs which behave like cities.
• Baby Boomers are still coming to Florida and are looking for safe urbanism.  Generation Y is looking for more diversity, accessibility, and fun.  In housing, they desire to see smaller but better, green/sustainability. and technology.

I found a version of this article in the December issue of Governing Magazine.  I’m posting a link to the online version.  It explains how federal policies limit the non-residential portion of projects, in effect limiting multi-use opportunities.  Due to codes and general fear of multi-use opportunities, we continue to build single-use developments, each segregated from each other by their use and only connected by asphalt.  I can attest to the fear as well as the regulation.

“Ask members of Generation Y where they want to live, and chances are you’ll hear a common answer: urban environments where there is plenty to do within walking distance. For younger people (and many other Americans, for that matter), the cul-de-sac is no longer key.

Yet national housing policy isn’t reflecting those changing preferences, say some advocates. These advocates are pushing the federal government to do away with practices they say discourage the type of walkable, sustainable communities – think condos and apartments on top of coffee houses, clustered around transit stops – that a growing number of Americans desire…”

It’s worth a read.

As we begin a new year, I plan to begin two new series on my blog. The first will be Architecture No-Nos and will include (often blatant) design flaws found around us. The other will be Missed Opportunities. The missed opportunities often will apply to development that would have been perfectly suited for mixed uses.

I’m no advocate for fake, but when adding a fake element, it is important to, at the minimum, place it in front of building mass that makes it reasonably appear as to not be fake. We can all see that the header for this “window” at Lakeside Village Center sits above the roof immediately behind the thin parapet wall. Not sure if the designer failed to look at it three-dimensionally, but it just looks goofy. And fake.

The neighborhood school, Sunset Park Elementary, is on one side of this dangerous intersection, and the families it serves reside on the other. Though it was not designed for this (but should have been), children walk to school each weekday through the intersection. I’ve spent some time considering the design of this intersection. The link below will download a PDF and explain the current conditions as well as safety features that should have been implemented.

535&Overstreet