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Neighbourhoods, Streets and Communities

Jon Lang

MUDD Program, UNSW 3rd July 2008

Community?

There are a number of definitions:

• The people living in an area• An interacting populations of

individuals in a common location• A group of people with a common

interest. Webster’s New Encyclopedic Dictionary (1993): 199

Streets and Communities

The primary role of streets is to give access streets also act as • edges or they can act• as seams for everyday life and community formation.

The urban design issue:

When do we give primacy to traffic flows and when to the street as a seam – as a set of behaviour settings?

Communities?• Socio-Psychological

- Formal Organization

- Communal Organization• Physical

- Precincts

- Neighbourhoods

- Face-blocks

- Buildings

Organizational Types:

Formal Organizations • They are held together by contract• They can be designed

Communal Organizations• They are held together by social

norms• They cannot be designed; they grow

from the grassroots

Types of socio-physical communities

• The total territorial community

-- the cresive community• The community of limited-liability

and• The administered community• The designed community

A total community? Collection of the author Photograph by Carolina Calderon

A pol, Ahmedabad

An administered community

GSFC Township Vadodara (Baroda), IndiaB. V.Doshi and the Vastu Shilpa Foundation, urban designers and architects

Wenxinyuan, Hankou

Source: Bray (2006)

Design principles:

• walled and gated

• a hierarchy of formal organizations

- block

- street

- building.

Is it a designed community or an administered community?

A designed community: A cohousing example

Trudeslund, Denmark Vankustein, architects

The search for ‘community’ through urban design

Design Ideas:• The standard model for decomposing a city

into its parts• The neighbourhood unit updated• The vertical neighbourhood

The role of streets in all these examples?

The generic urban decomposition model Source: Hester (1975)

A specific case: Columbia, Maryland, USARouse Corporation Property Developers.

The neigbourhood unit

Design Principles:• A well-bounded area (good contour)• Communal facilities at the core• ¼ mile (400 metres) walking

distance from the periphery to the core

• Shopping and apartment buildings at the intersections with neighbouring units

Clarence Perry Source: Regional Plan of New York, 1929

The Radburn (New Jersey, USA) plan Source: Gallion and Eisner, 1975

Clarence Stein and Henry Wright designers (Late 1920s)

The plan as built A cul--de-sac

Radburn

An underpass A walkway from the back of houses to the central park

The first generation British new towns Source: Runcorn Development Corporation (1967)

Runcorn, England (1970s)

A pedestrian pocket proposal Source: Kelbaugh (1989) Collection of the author

The generic idea An example

New Urbanism and neighbourhood design A neighbourhood should have:

• A discernible centre• Buildings in the centre built to the property line• Dwellings within a 5minute walk from the centre• A variety of dwelling types• Shops and offices at the periphery• An elementary school within walking distance of houses• A playground within 1/8 mile (200metres)• A connected network of streets and• A formal self-governing organization

Source: Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater Zyberk Architects, Inc.

The neighbourhood unit updated, 1994

Duany and Platter Zyberk, architects

Design Principles

• ¼ mile walking distance

• 160 acres bounded by boulevards

• shops + bus stop at the centre

• school shared with adjacent areas

• mixed use main street

• offices etc + parking on boulevards

The image of the main street

Source: Jackson (2006)

Proposal for Fullerton, California 2006 100 homes, 300,000 sq feet (27871sq metres) commercial space

Example: Playa Vista, Los Angeles

Source: Katz (1994): 186

US Patent 6688052- Neighborhood housing arrangement

(2004)

Source http://drflandershometown.com/HT%20PICTURES%20PAGE%2001.htm

The Rationalist Response: A vertical neighbourhood

The Unité d’ habitation, Marseilles, FranceLe Corbusier, architect

Source: Richards (1962)

A district of vertical neighbourhoods

Buildings set in open space

The modern version?

The street as seamWhy bother?

Streets as nested sets of behaviour settings

Remember such observations as these are culture-bound!

A University-Town Community A Neo-Traditionalist approach

Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium

Traffic and face-block neighbourhoods

The higher the traffic volume the less the communication across streets

Stage in life cycle and mobility

Source: Michael Southworth

Children – the true neighbourhood people?

Question: What do we do with observations such as this one?

Source: The Smithsons

A study of children’s play areas

Source: Randolph Hester, Neighborhood Space

The woonerf or ‘shared street’

Source: Southworth and Ben Joseph, 1996

The cul-de-sacNo longer a viable option? Too old-fashioned?

It’s a favoured play space for children

Recognizing the limitations of planning and design

Creating opportunities for the formation of community

(i.e., communities of limited liability)

What can we do today?

In creating a sense of community in a neigbourhood or in a building:

• Design a central node• Create a boundary• Create an image of similarity of buildings• Create formal organizations• Create opportunities/catalysts for social

meeting.

The most one can expect to achieve is a community of limited liability but also one rich in informal learning opportunities for children.

A community of ‘limited liability’ Collection of the author

Millennium Village, Greenwich, London, England, UKRalph Erskine, Urban Designer and Architect

A college community

Kresge College, University of California at Santa CruzMoore and Turnbull, architects

A community of scholars?A designed community

The National Center for the Humanities, North Carolina, USAHartman Cox, Architects

Conclusion

Remember:• We can design formal organizations• We cannot design communal ones• We can create opportunities

(affordances) for the development of communal organizations

But:• Most depends on the people involved

and their aspirations

The quality of streets is fundamental in the quality of communities

• They can be seams for everyday life• They are multi-purpose spaces• They establish the character of any

developmentRemember: • streets are three dimensional not just

the roadbed; they are enclosed by buildings

‘A street wants to be a room’ Louis I Kahn

The character of streets shapes the character of neighbourhoods Photographs by Jesus Lara Source: Croc (2005)

Main Street, Moapa Valley, Nevada and an alternative

Thank you Jon Lang