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Nikos A. Salingaros

THE FUTURE OF CITIES

With David Brain, Andrés Duany, Léon Krier, James Howard Kunstler, Michael Mehaffy, Ernesto Philibert-Petit, and Lucien Steil.

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Nikos A. Salingaros With David Brain, Andrés Duany, Léon Krier, James Howard Kunstler, Michael

Mehaffy, Ernesto Philibert-Petit, and Lucien Steil. THE FUTURE OF CITIES

ISBN XXX-XXXX © Nikos A. Salingaros & UMBAU-VERLAG, Solingen

Worldwide distribution by

UMBAU-VERLAG Harald Püschel Beckmannstrasse 21 • D – 42659 Solingen • Germany

info@umbau-verlag.com • www.umbau-verlag.com

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CONTENTS

Credits Introduction

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1. Social Housing in Latin America: A Methodology to Utilize Processes of Self-Organization (with David Brain, Andrés Duany, Michael Mehaffy, and Ernesto Philibert-Petit)

Chapter 2. Towards a New Urban Philosophy: The Case of Athens

Chapter 3. Compact City Replaces Sprawl Chapter 4. Growing Sustainable Suburbs: An Incremental Strategy for Reconstructing

Sprawl (with Michael Mehaffy and Lucien Steil) Chapter 5. The End of Tall Buildings (with James Howard Kunstler)

APPENDIX I: The Uninsurable Skyscraper APPENDIX II: Skyscrapers Have a Destructive Effect on the City (Olivier Hertel

interviews Nikos Salingaros) Chapter 6. The End of the Modern World (with Michael Mehaffy)

Chapter 7. The Future Of Cities: The Absurdity of Modernism (Nikos Salingaros interviews Léon Krier)

References

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CREDITS

Chapter 1. SOCIAL HOUSING IN LATIN AMERICA: A METHODOLOGY TO

UTILIZE PROCESSES OF SELF-ORGANIZATION. By Nikos Salingaros, David Brain, Andrés Duany, Michael Mehaffy & Ernesto

Philibert-Petit. Presented at the Brazilian and Ibero-American Congress on Social Housing, 2006.

Published in: 2º Congresso Brasileiro e 1º Iberoamericano, Habitação Social: Ciência e Tecnologia, Caderno de Conferências (Pós-Graduação em Arquitetura e Urbanismo da Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Florianópolis, Brazil, 2006), pages 28-47.

Chapter 2. TOWARDS A NEW URBAN PHILOSOPHY: THE CASE OF ATHENS. Originally appeared as Chapter 20 of Shifting Sense — Looking Back to the Future in

Spatial Planning, edited by Edward Hulsbergen, Ina Klaasen & Iwan Kriens (Techne Press, Amsterdam, 2005), pages 265-280. Earlier version published in two parts as “City of Chaos” in Greekworks.com (May & June 2004).

Chapter 3. COMPACT CITY REPLACES SPRAWL. Originally appeared in: Arie Graafland & Leslie Kavanaugh, Editors, Crossover:

Architecture, Urbanism, Technology (010 Publishers, Rotterdam, Holland, 2006), pages 100-115.

Chapter 4. GROWING SUSTAINABLE SUBURBS: AN INCREMENTAL

STRATEGY FOR RECONSTRUCTING SPRAWL. By Lucien Steil, Nikos Salingaros & Michael Mehaffy.

Excerpt from full paper was published by Raise the Hammer (April 2006), and reprinted by Portland Peak Oil (July 2006). Shorter version with figures to appear as a Chapter in: Tigran Haas, Editor, New Urbanism & Beyond: Contemporary and Future Trends in Urban Design (Rizzoli, New York, 2007), pages ?-?. The present full version in previously unpublished.

Chapter 5. THE END OF TALL BUILDINGS. By James Howard Kunstler & Nikos A. Salingaros.

Originally published by Planetizen.com (September 17, 2001). Reprinted in: Bruce Ballenger, The Curious Writer (Pearson-Longman, New York, 2004), pages 249-254. Reprinted in: Planetizen’s Contemporary Debates in Urban Planning, edited by Christian Peralta & Christopher Steins (Island Press, Washington DC, 2007), pages 117-?. Results

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of this Chapter were used by Sue Roaf in Chapter 11 of her book Adapting Buildings and Cities for Climate Change (Architectural Press, Oxford, 2005).

APPENDIX I: THE UNINSURABLE SKYSCRAPER.

Written for Planetizen.com, and published in: Planetizen’s Contemporary Debates in Urban Planning, edited by Christian Peralta & Christopher Steins (Island Press, Washington DC, 2007), pages ?-?.

APPENDIX II: SKYSCRAPERS HAVE A DESTRUCTIVE EFFECT ON THE CITY. Olivier Hertel interviews Nikos Salingaros.

Originally published in French by SCIENCES ET AVENIR No. 691 (September 2004), page 63. The present English version is previously unpublished. Translation by the author.

Chapter 6. THE END OF THE MODERN WORLD. By Michael W. Mehaffy & Nikos A. Salingaros.

Originally published by Planetizen.com (9 January 2002). Revised version published by Open Democracy (March 2002). Portions of this Chapter were used by Roger Scruton in his book The West and the Rest: Globalization and the Terrorist Threat (ISI Books, Wilmington, Delaware, 2002).

Chapter 7. THE FUTURE OF CITIES: THE ABSURDITY OF MODERNISM.

Nikos Salingaros interviews Léon Krier. Originally published by Planetizen.com (November 5, 2001). Shorter version reprinted

in Urban Land 61 (January 2002), pages 12-15. Portions reprinted in Katarxis No. 2 (2002). Italian version published by Archimagazine (February 2002), and reprinted in Temi di Stefano Borselli (2002). Swedish version published in Tvarsnitt Nr. 4 (2003). Spanish version published in Ambiente (March 2004). The present version is slightly longer than the original published one, because Léon Krier added some new material to the Italian version. For this book, I have translated those parts back into English and inserted them in the interview.

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INTRODUCTION

After the publication of my monograph “Principles of Urban Structure” (Techne Press, Amsterdam, 2005), I have put together newer articles on urbanism and cities into a new book. The previous book analyzed urban structures and processes, deriving rules for generating healthy urban fabric. This new book looks at urban forces that are shaping the contemporary city and suburb, and tries to identify destructive forces before they can do irreversible damage. I suggest how to channel urban forces so as to build healthy urban fabric, rather than to have to counteract them, which is much more difficult — and sometimes impossible — to do. I believe that, by identifying genuine urban forces that generate cities, we can finally put an end to anti-urban practices that have been perpetuated out of inertia and ignorance.

This book focuses on discovering the direction in which our cities are evolving morphologically. It proposes measures that can be taken to ensure that the evolution is a healthy one. New questions led to new chapters, which were added to this book in due course. It includes the now famous article “The End of Tall Buildings”, written with James Howard Kunstler. There are several brief follow-ups to that article condemning skyscrapers, which present a stronger case than ever for not building them. A main topic of discussion is the emerging electronic city that might replace much of the built infrastructure. I am also very happy to include an interview with Léon Krier (which is more Krier than me). This interview gave me the idea for the book’s title.

Unlike other academic books on urbanism and planning, I have focused on the actual problems of today rather than confining myself to theoretical (and often unrealistic) ideals. On the one hand, the world’s cities face sprawl in two distinct unsustainable forms: the informal and self-built favela is covering much of the planet’s urbanized regions; while developer-generated suburbia is eating into farmland around the wealthier nations’ cities. Both of these sprawl typologies have deep-seated problems, and are unsustainable. On the other hand, over-concentration has degraded our city centers, and that’s why the topic of skyscrapers is so relevant. Over-concentration is not a solution to sprawl, but its unavoidable complement. Post-war urbanism has promoted sprawl and skyscrapers together; twin pathologies scarring the earth’s surface and drastically modifying the original human intention of congregating people into cities.

Despite the book’s title, this is not a futurist excursion: I don’t pretend to make wild predictions and speculations about what cities might look like in the future. I instead propose what steps might be taken so as to ensure that cities are indeed livable in the future … so that urbanism (and humanity, for that matter) has a future. The message is to learn from the past, to combine our unimaginably powerful technological resources with an understanding of human nature so as to achieve harmony with the earth. I argue against the overly eager applications of technology for its own sake — for the “thrill” of flaunting our power over nature. Such applications usually destroy the environment and the fragile connections that make human society possible. If the future turns out to be good for our cities, they will resemble the best urban environments of the past, with unanticipated and novel features that reinforce human wellbeing.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book would not have been possible without the generous contribution of my co-authors. I thank them all, and consider myself privileged to be able to work with such a distinguished group of urbanists and writers. Even in articles where they were not themselves co-authors, my friends helped by offering comments and suggestions. At the same time, our collaboration itself occurred in the context of the electronic city — all my joint work was done via the Internet. This is but one small example of how the electronic city can help the physical city. We are working on developing more.

Two organizations figure prominently in this book: ESRG — Environmental Structure Research Group, and Katarxis Urban Workshops. ESRG is an interdisciplinary, international partnership of the world’s foremost urban thinkers and practitioners. ESRG has many members, and includes all the authors of Chapter 1: David Brain, Andrés Duany, Michael Mehaffy, Ernesto Philibert-Petit, and myself. Katarxis Urban Workshops is composed of the authors of Chapter 4: Michael Mehaffy, Lucien Steil, and myself, who are also members of ESRG.

I am glad to thank friends for help on individual chapters. For Chapter 3 “Compact City Replaces Sprawl” I am greatly indebted to Sandy Sorlien, without whose active participation this Chapter could never have been written. Thanks also to Michael Mehaffy for useful advice; to Andrés Duany for support; and to Christopher Alexander for sharing an unpublished letter from himself to Andrés Duany on the differences between their respective approaches to urban form.

Fellow members of the ESRG enthusiastically joined me to write Chapter 4 Social Housing in Latin America: A Methodology to Utilize Processes of Self-Organization. Through ESRG, an efficient online collaboration was made possible. I am indebted to ESRG members Besim Hakim and Yodan Rofè, who sent me incisive and very helpful comments. Other individuals who contributed useful material and references for Chapter 1 include Ana Cecilia Ambriz and Alfredo Ambriz with the Universidad Autónoma de Guadalajara, Pablo Bullaude with Fundación CEPA, Andrius Kulikauskas with the Global Villages Group, and Fausto Martínez with IPFC.

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CHAPTER ONE

SOCIAL HOUSING IN LATIN AMERICA: A METHODOLOGY TO UTILIZE PROCESSES

OF SELF-ORGANIZATION.

By Nikos A. Salingaros, David Brain, Andrés M. Duany, Michael W. Mehaffy & Ernesto Philibert-Petit (all members of

ESRG — Environmental Structure Research Group).

We offer here a set of evidence-based optimal practices for social housing, applicable

in general situations. Varying examples are discussed in a Latin American context. Adaptive solutions work towards long-term sustainability and help to attach residents to their built environment. We draw upon new insights in complexity science, and in particular the work of Christopher Alexander on how to successfully evolve urban form. By applying the conceptual tools of “Pattern Languages” and “Generative Codes”, these principles support previous solutions derived by others, which were never taken forward in a viable form. New methodologies presented here offer a promising alternative to the failures of the standard social housing typologies favored by governments around the world, which have proven to be dehumanizing and ultimately unsustainable.

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SECTIONS 1-4: BACKGROUND AND CRITICISM. 1. Introduction. This Chapter outlines promising new solutions for the future of social housing. It has

been prepared as a comprehensive report by one of the authors (NAS) for Brazil, and is generally applicable to all of Latin America. One of us (AMD) is designing social housing in Jamaica and elsewhere in the Caribbean. Two of the authors (AMD & MWM) are directly involved with the reconstruction after the hurricane Katrina devastation in the Southern United States, which faces similar, though not identical, realities. Another author (EPP) has researched the pedestrian connectivity of the urban fabric, and is involved in providing government-assisted housing solutions on a massive scale in Mexico. The remaining author (DB) has long studied the influence of urban form on social wellbeing and community sustainability, a crucial factor in our discussion.

The challenge of social housing is a major component of world urban growth, and we wish to present here a comprehensive methodology for radically improving its performance. Success will be measured in human terms: i.e., the physical and emotional wellbeing of the resident. We consider a project to be successful if it is maintained and loved by its residents, and also if the urban fabric joins in a healthy and interactive way to the rest of the city. On the other hand, we consider as unsuccessful (and hence unsustainable) a project that is hated by its residents for a number of different reasons, wastes resources in initial construction and upkeep, contributes to social degradation, isolates its residents from society, or decays physically in a short period of time.

The essence of the approach presented here is to apply a sustainable PROCESS rather than a specific IMAGE to design and building. The way it was done in the recent past is to build according to a prepared image of what the buildings ought to look like, and how they should be arranged. By contrast, no image of our project exists at the beginning: it emerges from the process itself, and is clear only after everything is finished.

We can move toward a more thorough and satisfying solution by drawing upon Christopher Alexander’s work — one of several pioneers who proposed that urban fabric should follow an organic paradigm — and can include theoretical and practical work that for various reasons is not widely applied. What we offer is supported by the evidence from many examples of traditional practice over centuries. Governments instead choose to impose schemes and typologies that ultimately generate hostility for the fabric of social housing from its occupants. We will analyze the reasons for this hostility in order to prevent it in the future. The relatively simple solutions presented here are generic. Therefore, though geared to Latin America, they can be adopted by the rest of the world with only minor modifications. This study outlines ideas that are general enough to apply to countries where local conditions that produce housing might be very different.

We can learn from innovative approaches to government-sponsored housing, developed by independent groups in many different settings and conditions. Out of many projects built over several decades, very few can be judged to be truly successful using our criteria of the residents’ physical and emotional wellbeing. Those few excellent solutions tend to be neglected because they fail to satisfy certain iconic properties (which

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we discuss in detail later in this Chapter). Perhaps surprisingly, we also draw upon successful typologies developed for sustainable upper-income communities.

This Chapter combines two mutually complementary approaches (and will contrast these with existing methods). On the one hand, we will give some explicit practical rules for building social housing. Any group or agency wishing to get started immediately may implement these — with appropriate local modifications — on actual projects. On the other hand, we will present a general philosophical and scientific background for social housing and its cultural implications. The aim of this theoretical material is to “give permission” for common-sense arguments; to create the conditions that will safely allow and support what in effect comes naturally. People, acting as intelligent local agents, may then apply methods that evolved during millennia of successfully performing owner-built housing — as part of the production of healthy resident-built communities.

This methodology recognizes and incorporates the self-organizing features of the most robust human settlements throughout history, by utilizing a “complexity-managing” approach, rather than a linear, “top-down” approach. We propose channeling the design talent and building energy of the people themselves, acting as local agents, within a system that we manage only to help generate and guide its evolving complexity. In such an approach, “bottom-up” processes are allowed to develop organically, though within constraints based upon prior experience. On the other hand, “top-down” interventions must be done experimentally and carefully (i.e., with feedback), allowing more interaction with smaller-scale “bottom-up” processes.

Our proposal goes beyond housing that is literally owner-built in the sense that owners hammer nails and pour concrete. It is important that they experience the process of design and building as THEIR process. It’s all about establishing connection and engagement. The key point is a process that accommodates real engagement, that is agile enough to be responsive to adaptive processes, and that can engage without being driven by the social dynamics of inequality into unfortunate directions. Most important, the process can take advantages of both technology and expertise. We are proposing something far more than letting the poor fend for themselves — we wish to empower them with the latest tools and a highly sophisticated understanding of urban form.

As many authors have described previously (e.g. Alexander et. al. (1977), Jacobs (1961), Turner (1976)), established planning practice has tended to follow an outmoded early industrial model. That model arose in the 1920s, and was widely adopted in the period following World War II. It was based upon a hierarchical “top-down” command-and-control paradigm, leading to predict-and-provide planning. Research amply demonstrates that this model does not sufficiently reflect the kind of scientific problem a city poses, because the model ignores the tremendous physical and social complexity of successful urban fabric. Incredibly, it does not even address human interactions with the built environment. The resulting failures and unintended consequences are well documented. As science develops more fine-grained and more accurate research tools for the analytical study of such self-organizing phenomena (which include cities), it is necessary now to propose a radical new urbanism. We wish to empower people with the authority of a new methodology, grounded in recent urban research.

The problem isn’t just the lack of physical complexity. The key to urban place making

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is really the relationship between the complexity of spatial form and the complexity of social process. If it were just a matter of physical complexity, one might imagine that a top-down process could be created to simulate that complexity — say, a computer algorithm. The crucial point is that this physical complexity embodies and expresses social life. It is, in certain respects, social relations by other means (e.g., artifacts and built spaces). To some extent, the answer begins by re-conceiving the built environment itself as social process, not just as product or container. This becomes important later when we talk about maintenance, since the processual character of this kind of ownership merely begins when residents move in.

This Chapter is very complex and deals with many issues, so we need to map out its exposition. The first four sections provide background and criticize current practices. Section 2 introduces the competition between owner-built settlements and government-built social housing. Section 3 reviews the standard practices and typologies of top-down social housing programs, and recommends replacing them (or at least complementing them) with a bottom-up procedure. Section 4 pinpoints how a “geometry of control” ruins even the best-intentioned schemes by making them inhuman.

The next six sections offer specific tools for design. Section 5 turns to mechanisms for establishing emotional connections with the built environment. Biophilia, or the need to connect directly to plant life, is a crucial component. We also discuss sacred spaces and their role towards establishing community. Section 6 reviews the work of Christopher Alexander, especially his recent work on generative codes. Section 7 argues against the fixed master plan approach, suggesting instead an iterative back-and-forth planning process. Section 8 reviews Alexandrine patterns and outlines their transition to generative codes. Section 9 gives, in the broadest possible terms, our methodology for planning a settlement. We suggest getting building permission for a process rather than for a design on paper. Section 10 contains an explicit set of codes describing the armature of services in a social housing project. Section 11 introduces the complementary design tools by describing the generative codes needed for such a project.

The next four sections continue with practical suggestions for making projects work. Section 12 suggests appointing a project manager to direct the application of generative codes. Section 13 argues for using appropriate materials: cheap but permanent; durable but flexible enough to shape; solid but friendly to sight and touch. We also discuss the proper use of industrial modules such as a plumbing box. Section 14 broaches the topic of funding a project, recommending the involvement of a non-governmental organization that focuses on the small scale. Section 15 is political, delving into how one can best cooperate with existing systems geared to producing social housing that follow very different, industrial typologies. Section 16 offers strategies for getting residents to maintain their settlements after they are built.

The final four sections identify some of the problems. Section 17 faces the difficult problem of retrofitting the favela to make it an acceptable part of urban fabric. Sometimes it cannot be done. We discuss a reinforcement strategy for when it is feasible to do so. Section 18 analyzes some failures to understand the life of a squatter, such as their economic need for proximity to the city. This makes new social housing built far outside the city unattractive. We also warn against grand schemes that can turn into economic disasters. Section 19 blames architects for imposing modernist forms on social

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housing. That geometry makes them hostile for residents. Section 20 blames the residents themselves for rejecting adaptive housing and urban typologies, wanting instead the sterile images of modernism. Section 21 reviews how conditions are different today from the past several decades, and offers optimism for a broad acceptance of adaptive housing.

The Appendix contains an explicit generative sequence for social housing on a greenfield or open brownfield.

2. The Ecosystem Analogy. Here is a basic incompatibility: organic urban fabric is an extension of human biology,

whereas planned construction is an artificial vision of the world imposed by the human mind on nature. The former is full of life but can be poor and unsanitary, whereas the latter is often clean and efficient but sterile. One of these two contrasting urban morphologies can win out over the other, or they could both reach some sort of equilibrium coexistence (as has occurred in most of Latin America). In the movement for “self-construction”, the government accepts that owners will build their own houses, and provides materials and training to help establish the networks of electricity, water, and sewerage.

“Social housing” is usually understood as a project for housing the poor, built and financed by a government or non-governmental organization. Occupants could purchase their units, but a usual practice is to rent them at low subsidized rents, or even to provide them for free. In the latter instances, the residents live there by courtesy of (and are subject to varying degrees of control by) the owning entity. A “squatter settlement”, on the other hand, is a self-built development on land that is not owned by the residents, and which is frequently occupied without permission. Since squatter settlements are illegal, the government generally refuses to provide the means of legally purchasing individual plots of land. In most cases, it also refuses to connect those residences to the utility grid (electricity, water, and sewerage) of the rest of the city. As a result, living conditions there are the worst among peacetime settlements.

Social housing and squatter settlements are regions where more than one billion of the world’s very poor live. We are going to discuss these two urban phenomena side-by-side, and offer to resolve the ideological and spatial competition between the two. As a basic starting point, housing for the poor represents the lowest level of the world’s urban ecosystem. Different forces within human society generate both types of urban system: either government-sponsored social housing, or squatter settlements. Christopher Alexander (2005), Hassan Fathy (1973), N. J. Habraken (1972), John F. C. Turner (1976), and others recognized this competition before us, and proposed an accommodation of the two systems. Turner helped to build several projects in Peru and Mexico, and advised others on implementing such ideas worldwide.

The ecosystem analogy also explains and to a certain extent justifies the vigilance by which governments prevent squatter settlements from invading the rest of the city. If not restrained by law and direct intervention, squatters move into private and public land. We are describing a species competition for the same available space. Each species (urban typology) wants to displace all the others. Squatter settlements can take over the entire

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city if allowed to do so (for example, in Cairo, they have taken over the flat roofs of commercial buildings; in the USA people build temporary shelters in public parks and under highway overpasses). The government, in turn, would like to clear all squatter settlements. Governments the world over assume that they must construct planned housing to replace owner-built housing. That is too expensive to be feasible.

Like all truly organic systems, cities are better off without central control. Accommodating competing urban systems never became standard practice, however. Although the basic ideas about traditional settlements were in place, several key elements of understanding were previously missing. We are now offering expertise in housing as a DYNAMIC process (by combining pattern languages with generative codes: see later sections). Interventions are needed, starting from scratch in new housing projects. The same dynamic process can also be applied to already built environments, in seeking to adapt a large number of informal unplanned housing projects (favelas or others) by bringing them up to acceptable living conditions.

Competition occurs among all economic strata (“species”) that either use urban land, or profit from it. In Latin American cities, urban land speculation leaves a large amount of undeveloped land with all the services already in place wasted. The poorest population then has to find plots on the outskirts, and pay steep prices for water and other services, without having the benefit of living close to their main source of income (the central city). This creates a severe problem for the government. Rather than characterizing the practice as “unfair” (which does not lead to any change), we point out its tremendous cumulative costs for the future.

Throughout all the various schemes for social housing tried over the years, it is widely accepted (with only a few exceptions) that the unplanned owner-built favela is embarrassing to the government, and has to be bulldozed as soon as possible. Yet that assumption is wrong. Very few in a position of authority seem to consider the urban and economic advantages of existing shantytowns. The geometry of buildings, lots, and street patterns has for the most part developed (evolved) organically, and we will argue here that this self-organization affords a number of very desirable features. With all its grave faults, the favela offers an instructive spontaneous demonstration of economic, efficient, and rapid processes of housing people.

The favelas’ disadvantages are not inherent in the urban system itself. Their organic geometry is perfectly sound, yet it is precisely that aspect which is vehemently rejected. It simply doesn’t fit into the stereotyped (and scientifically outmoded) image of what a progressive urban fabric ought to resemble — neat, smooth, rectangular, modular, and sterile. A favela’s organic geometry is linked with the illegal act of squatting, and with a pervasive lawlessness. The geometry itself represents “an enemy to progress” for an administration. We cannot build living urban fabric (or save existing portions) until we get past that prejudice. The favela has a self-healing mechanism absent from most top-down social housing schemes. Organic growth also repairs urban fabric in a natural process, something entirely absent from geometrically rigid housing projects.

Ironically, the organic geometry of the favela is typically at odds with the imperatives of both the Left and the Right in a modern state, given its interest in responding to social issues in a manner that is appropriately controlled. Some of that interest in control has to

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do with a literal interest in the kind of rational administrative order that is tied to social control. Nevertheless, much of it may reflect either the state’s need to legitimate its interventions by demonstrating its rationality, or its need to maintain the bureaucratic rituals of accountability when distributing public resources, or its respect for the conventions of private property. It could also be a sincere reformist concern for elevating the living standards of the poor in a way that is both efficient and procedurally fair, in a manner motivated by democratic principles.

An ordered geometry gives the impression of control invested in the entity that builds. Whether this is intentional (to display the authority of the state) or subconscious (copying images from architecture books), governments and non-governmental organizations prefer to see such an expression of their own “rationality” through building. Departure from this set of typologies is felt to be a relaxation of authority; or it raises possible questions regarding the legitimacy of distributions of resources that aren’t subject to careful bureaucratic accounting procedures. Both of these are avoided because they tend to erode the authority of the state, particularly under regimes where the rights of private property are an important part of the legal and regulatory systems. Morphologically complex squatter settlements are usually outside the government’s control altogether. One way of asserting control is to move their residents to housing built by the government. In a sad and catastrophic confirmation of our ideas, various governments in Africa have periodically bulldozed owner-built dwellings, driving their residents to live out in the open.

3. Antipatterns of Social Housing. Let us summarize some of the current beliefs and typologies that drive social housing

today, so that we can replace them with an entirely different framework. We will suggest using solutions that we feel work best as the more enlightened alternative. Much of our criticism focuses on top-down control. That approach leads to simplification in the planning process. However, one cannot design and build complex urban fabric using top-down tools. There is more to criticize in the specific images people have of modernity. That concerns both architects, who carry with them a false set of desirable images; and residents, who are invariably influenced by those same images through the media.

1. Existing public housing projects are conceptualized and built as cheap dormitories, and thus follow a military/industrial planning philosophy: build as many units as possible, as cheaply and efficiently as possible. We should abandon this mindset and build urban quarters instead. Building an urban quarter is a much more complex undertaking, and one that requires complex engagement beyond the small circles of policy-making and professional elites.

2. To erect a housing project most efficiently, the directing entity wants to have maximal control over the geometry and building process. This practical requirement means that user participation is excluded.

3. The very name “social housing” implies that only a dormitory is built, and not an urban quarter. Following World War II, monofunctional zoning became the established criterion by which governmental interventions were carried out. Those ideas were in

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place before the War, but post-war reconstruction and expansion gave the opportunity to apply them on a much larger scale.

4. The industrial building typology relegates plants and the natural environment to a purely decorative role, or eliminates them altogether. Nevertheless, human health is possible only if we connect to plants and nature in our immediate surroundings: the “Biophilia Hypothesis” (Kellert, 2005).

5. An urban quarter is comprised of complex social networks, and requires the appropriate urban morphology of a network. It is never monofunctional, and it is not homogeneous. It cannot be built in a top-down fashion by central government. Individual villages (Pueblos in Latin America) have been evolving far longer than 500 years; they possess a rich inheritance of a mixture of many cultures that comes from the deep past, e.g. indigenous cultures such as Toltec, Mayan, Incan, Carib and incoming cultures such as Spanish, Portuguese, African, Islamic and so on. There are many lessons that we can learn from this evolution.

6. A conventional social housing project is seldom concerned about social accessibility to the urban network, since it is usually built in disconnected (many times rural) areas. All too often, the issue is understood only as a matter of “housing”, with measures of success typically in terms of quantities of “units” and immediate impact on individuals, rather than the quality (or sustainability) of the community life that results.

7. The typical location of social housing projects in rural areas has to do with a powerful economic reason: the land owners have managed to get a change of land use and have obtained for themselves an extraordinary surplus value. This is part of the sprawl-oriented development in our cities. Furthermore, the project itself, the government, and the users seldom benefit in any way from this surplus value.

8. A typical social housing project conceived as a disconnected “urban island” has an awful impact on the environment. It is disconnected from local and from global economic cycles.

9. The geometry of a conventional social housing project and the configuration of its constituent units give few or no ways to affect further development. They present a number of geometrical obstacles for its evolution over time. This impediment frustrates the inhabitants’ hopes, and suppresses their prospects for social and economic improvement.

10. Architects, government officials, and future residents all carry within their minds an “image of modernity”. This set of ingrained images generates a building typology that is hostile in actual use, and presents one of the greatest obstacles to adaptive social housing.

Governments are still stuck in the mindset of social housing serving jobs in a particular place. The reality is different: healthy urban quarters connect into an urban conglomeration, and people work wherever they can find jobs. By contrast, unhealthy urban regions are isolated, disconnecting people from each other and from employment opportunities. Despite strong social and economic forces leading to isolation, our aim is not to codify this isolation in the buildings and urban form. To do that is to compound the problem. We should instead use the urban geometry to counteract social isolation.

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The above list of typologies and practices leads to unhealthy housing projects, creating unsustainable social conditions. To achieve a more adaptive approach, those typologies must be reversed, and the forces that lead us to repeat the same mistakes over and over again should be redirected. Some errors arise simply out of inertia: copying failed solutions because it has become a habit to do so, and not identifying viable alternatives. Those errors are very easy to resolve once the situation is better understood. There is another class of errors, however, which arise because the same forces lead to similar expressions in practical applications. Those conditions cannot be changed, and must instead be redirected. Failure to understand the difference between the two problems means that we will never be able to improve the current situation.

One principle becomes clear: there is no point of designing “social housing” as such. We need to design and build complex, mixed-use urban fabric, and to make sure it fits into existing complex mixed-use urban fabric. Social housing, and housing in general, need to be part of a healthy (and socially inclusive) process of urbanism. The very notion of monofunctional housing is obsolete, discredited because it never worked to connect residents to their environment. All of the planning measures we reject — originally well intentioned — were adopted as a means to improve efficiency in facing a serious urban challenge.

The underlying reasons for their failure have never been officially admitted, however. As a result, there has been a tendency for the debate to focus on problems with the design of social housing as buildings: as if it were merely a matter of coming up with a better design idea to be imposed with more or less the same apparatus of top-down control. Usually nowadays, an architect’s idea of a good design is impersonal and oppressive to the actual users. Some more recent public housing initiatives in the USA (such as the HOPE VI program) have made an effort to incorporate resident participation in the process, but relatively superficially and with very mixed success. Our key point is that the process of producing living places that incorporate social housing has to be changed at its root. It must accommodate more fundamental and meaningful engagement, grounding the generation of urban form in a process that adequately respects the organized complexity distinctive to the nature of cities.

There is a need to mix social classes for a healthier social fabric. The mix can occur naturally through the process of upgrading. It is also important that people who have a choice remain in the neighborhood. The comprehensive approach to creating a village would seem to make sense in places like Latin America where whole settlements of previously rural people create shanty towns and squatter settlements on the periphery of big cities. In that context, there may be no option but to catalyze the generation of whole urban quarters built by the residents, with help by us. Generally, we would want to be cautious about building urban quarters specifically for the poor. Healthy urban fabric is not monofunctional, and neither does it strictly contain one income level. We are aware of the tremendous social difficulties of encouraging mixed-income housing, because of the perception that no one would ever want to live next to people even slightly poorer than they are. However, we can find encouraging examples of social mixture in historic towns and historic city centers all around Latin America (the Centro Histórico of Querétaro is a good example). The difference lies in the perception of community (which

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can overcome income differences) versus perceiving a house strictly as real estate. Mixed income communities are not only possible, but are more resilient.

It is not just a question here of physically separated urban quarters on the urban periphery. How does one create a unique pattern-generating process for these urban quarters, without creating enclaves that stand out dramatically from the rest of the city? In other words, how does one plan for low-income buildings without creating “projects”, barrios, and ghettos? It seems to us that it is crucial that this rethinking of “social housing” has to be a rethinking of everybody’s housing — i.e., of urbanism — such that “social housing” is subsumed by a more general process of creating a city of healthy networks (Salingaros, 2005). Connecting to the global networks of the city: major streets, the public transportation system, political and social networks, etc., is of the greatest importance.

Part of the mindset of government is that “social housing” has to follow a specific set of policies directed at a specific problem, and administered in and through specific sites. We have super block projects (which are dehumanizing but easy to administer), or we have something like the Section 8 voucher system in the USA, which subsidizes rent for low-income residents. In the case of the latter, social housing becomes an abstract category — defined only in terms of the pathologies of individuals who need assistance, and addressed in the form of payments to property owners. In the latter case, the “site” is a category of individuals, severed from community connections.

Typically, the poor already have complex social networks upon which they rely heavily for survival. At the same time, however, the relative isolation of these networks is a serious problem. Although often very densely connected in a “peer group society”, the poor tend to have limited connections outside those circles, and are isolated in their own villages. They are bound into small networks, but have no sense of themselves categorically as residents of a neighborhood. They also tend to distrust people from outside their networks. Essentially, they have no capacity to identify with or care about the neighborhood as a neighborhood. The problem from a network point of view becomes how to strengthen the pattern of weak ties in such a way that one can incorporate low-income populations into civic life. Moreover, this has to be done without disrupting the strong networks of mutual assistance on which those residents rely. The solution requires organizing these local networks into a network that works on a larger scale.

4. A Geometry of Control. The psychological process of control influences urban form and the shape of social

housing to a remarkable extent. Control may be manifested in architectural geometry and also in urban layout. A rigid, mechanical geometry dictates the shape of individual buildings and urban spaces, while the geometry of their layout determines the relationship among separate buildings and the shape of the street network. There are many opportunities to express control in urban and architectural terms, and we find them all in government-built social housing.

Examples of organic/bottom-up generated urban structures are found along a universal timeline starting with the first cities registered in the Neolithic period, through modern

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times. The mechanical/top-down fabricated urban structure is found in our timeline ever since patterns of colonization first appeared in history. Thus, we have models of this mechanical structure dating from the imperial periods of Greece, Rome, or China until today. In the 20th Century, an exacerbated mechanical structure was imposed on cities by the machine culture of modernist thoughts and values. This last period has been decisive in configuring the structure of present day cities, and is set to dominate those of coming years. In the near future, spatial fragmentation could become the ultimate consequence of the recent past. Alternatively, we may enter the period when the emerging paradigm of networks could be wisely used to connect our spatial structures and patterns again, working instead against fragmentation.

There exists a clearly recognizable “geometry of power” (Alexander, 2005; Salingaros, 2006). It is most clearly expressed in military and Fascist architecture of the Second World War (and long before that), but has been adopted by governments and institutions of all political persuasions (from the most progressive, to the most repressive). Such buildings are shaped as oversized rectangular blocks and are placed in strictly repetitive rectangular grids. High-rise blocks give the impression of control of their occupants, who are forced into a military/industrial typology that is obviously the opposite of the free urban geometry of the favela. We have two contrasting geometries: housing units massed into one or more blocks, versus having them spread out irregularly. The psychological impression of control follows the possibility of ACTUAL control, as the entrance to a high-rise housing block can be easily sealed off by the police, something that is impossible in a rambling cluster of individual houses.

Government officials and developers share these views about control, and this in turn tends to eliminate any other approach. The local government would prefer to have better access to the site through regularly shaped blocks. Administrators are fooled by the notion that simplistic geometric shapes are the only typology we can use to create efficient new dwellings.

An administration can build many smaller units rather than high-rise blocks, but rigidly fixed to a military/industrial grid on the ground. Individual housing units are exact copies of a single prototype. Control here is exercised by not allowing individual variations. One modular house is repeated to cover the entire region, with careful attention paid to strict rectangular alignment. Complexity and variation are perceived as losing overall control — not only of building typology, but also of the way decisions are made — and are thus avoided.

Several factors provide powerful motivations for standardization and relatively rigid regulations: administrative efficiency, accountability, maintenance of standards on which the success of the administration will be assessed, and the requirements of both transparency and procedural fairness. The efficiency of modular production, falsely tied to economic progress, is used as an excuse for the military/industrial geometry. Building variability is perceived as a threat, and is countered by arguments about excessive production costs. Those arguments support the belief that central planning is an economic and social necessity. Yet, such arguments have been shown again and again to be invalid. It is once more the industrial, mechanical paradigm of linear production (and linear thinking) that does not allow developers of social housing to consider variability, heterogeneity, and complexity as essential features in their projects.

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In a manner similar to the application of new technology to factory production, a justification is often presented in terms of cost and efficiency, but the underlying logic is a logic of control. In the context of the modern state, it is often more crucial to maintain standards, transparency, and accountability than to reduce cost in absolute terms. As a result, it has become all too common for the structures of bureaucratic administration (with the best of intentions, and regardless of ideological leanings of Left or Right) to impose standards that disrupt the very thing they hope to accomplish.

Adaptability to individual needs requires design freedom so that every unit could be different, with its shape and position decided in large part by its future residents. It is indeed possible to do that. Nevertheless, both sides of the political spectrum strongly oppose design freedom. The Right considers poor people not to deserve such attention, and that a custom-made house is the exclusive privilege of the wealthy class. The Left, on the other hand, stands firmly behind its belief of fundamental equality, which it misinterprets as forbidding houses in a social development from being in any way different from each other. Institutions such as banks, construction companies, and land surveyors get frightened by the prospect of having to deal with individual variations.

Control is exerted in other, more subtle ways as a result of standardization. A cheaply produced building module available in the marketplace, if it is large enough, replaces other, better alternatives. Modular components restrict design freedom, because they influence the final product resulting from their assembly (Alexander, 2005; Salingaros, 2006). Governments that sponsor social housing do like to promote industrial modules and components, and to discourage construction that is shaped individually. Nevertheless, local production could be achieved more cheaply, and solves part of the unemployment problem. An industrial geometry embodied in architectural and urban typologies is eventually reflected in the built environment.

The natural environment becomes one more casualty of the geometry of control. Nature and life are visually “messy”. Topographical features such as rocks, hills, and streams; as well as trees and plant life, pose challenges to a flat, rectangular geometry, and are thus usually eliminated. Local governments put in effort to eradicate organic elements from the “ideal” sterile environment. Sometimes (but not always), this act of aggression against nature is mollified after the fact by planting a few non-native trees in strict geometrical alignment and making up a phony rock landscape as a visual sculpture. Existing native plant species are regarded as unwelcome, and only an artificial-looking lawn is acceptable (because it is sleek and does not grow unevenly like other plants). In low-income housing, even that is considered an unaffordable luxury, so in the end, the project acquires an unnatural, lifeless character, totally lacking in connections to plant growth.

SECTIONS 5-11: SPECIFIC TOOLS FOR DESIGN THAT HELPS ESTABLISH INTELLECTUAL OWNERSHIP.

5. Biophilia, Connectivity, and Spirituality. The notion of “biophilic architecture” establishes that human health and wellbeing

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strongly depend on the geometry of the environment, as expressed in particular configurations, surfaces, materials, details, light, and accessibility to plants and other forms of life (Kellert, 2005). All of these factors contribute to the success of any building, and to social housing in particular. Evidence-based design is based on knowing how a human being is affected by his/her environment.

The appropriate geometry that promotes human wellbeing is unsurprisingly the opposite of the geometry of power described in the preceding section. A living geometry is loose, complex, and highly interconnective. It is the geometry of the owner-built favela, and also the natural geometry of a river, a tree, or a lung. Without any imposed constraints, human beings will build according to this natural geometry (Alexander, 2005; Salingaros, 2006). Note that many self-built projects do not entirely follow this generative geometry, because the government defines a rectangular grid of plots before giving the land over to individual builders. Thus, it already imposes an industrial grid that is impossible to change. We will discuss later how this restrictive practice can be avoided.

Geometry and surface qualities either help or hinder an emotional connection with the human beings who use them. We should balance the study of structure with the study of form and pattern. In the study of structure, we measure and weigh things. Patterns of interaction cannot be measured or weighed, however: they must be mapped, and they have to do more with quality. To understand a pattern we must map a configuration of relationships. We believe in the concept of the city as an organism, not only in the sense that it tries to develop an organic structure, but also because of the complex relationship this structure establishes with the organizational patterns of its users. Here is a list of some key concepts that we need to work with:

1. People become psychologically sick and hostile in an environment devoid of nature. Biophilia is innate in our genes. Urban quarters need to blend with and not replace natural habitats.

2. We connect to plants through their geometrical structure, thus some geometries are more connective to the human spirit than others. We feel comfortable with a built environment that incorporates complex natural geometry showing an ordered hierarchy of subdivisions.

3. Residents should love their homes and neighborhoods. That means that the form of the immediate built environment must be spiritual and not industrial.

4. Industrial materials and typologies generate hatred for the built environment. We grow hostile to surfaces and forms that do not nourish us spiritually, because we feel their rejection of our humanity. If not hatred, they often generate a kind of indifference that might actually be worse for human communities. The use of these materials and typologies has commonly been presented as dictated by the nature of building technology and the economic realities of the day. The result is that people often take for granted the unavoidable alien character of a built environment that delivers quantity without meaningful qualities.

5. The sacred character of traditional villages and urban quarters cannot be dismissed as outmoded nonsense (as is done nowadays). This is the only quality that connects a

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village on the large scale to people, hence indirectly to each other. We need to build it into the urban quarter.

It is not easy to identify the sacred structure of any settlement, let alone plan for it in a new one. We need to look at the patterns of human activity in traditional settlements, and ask which activity nodes are valued above all others. Usually, it is where local residents come together to interact. Those nodes (if they are present at all) could be interior, but very often they are elements of urban space (Gehl, 1996). People can connect to plants and to other people at the same time in properly designed (configured) urban spaces. Those places are then responsible for the societal cohesion of the neighborhood.

Something is “sacred” if we attribute to it a value above and beyond its material structure. A good rule is to ask if we are willing to fight to protect it from damage or destruction. Do many persons, some necessarily strangers, feel the same way about this? Do we consider a place to have meaning for the community as a whole so that a group of people will actually come together to protect this particular object or site? In ancient societies, an old tree, a large rock, prominent high ground, a particular stream or spring could be considered sacred (in the deepest religious sense), and thus protected from damage. Those societies built towns around sacred spaces, and endowed parts of what they built with a sacred meaning. Today, that quality is unfortunately dismissed as anachronistic.

For example, the oldest social nodes are a water source (community tap or well), place of worship (Church or Temple), gathering place (cafe/bar for men), children’s playground, etc. In the case of a Church, we do have a genuinely sacred structure, and it is most often built in the original geographic center of a settlement. It serves the cohesive function of community: “ecclesia” is the gathering together of common worshippers, which is just as much a cohesive social act as it is a purely religious act. It is no coincidence that the non-religious gathering place, the coffeehouse, is often situated in front of the Church in a traditional village. The coffeehouse substitutes as an alternative gathering place for those who do not subscribe to the sacred meaning of the local religion.

Another node of the sacred structure is the central plaza or open square, which, in temperate climates, accommodates social life in the evenings. The Latin tradition of the evening walk around the central square establishes a value for the plaza in the social cohesion of the community. What we refer to as “sacred structure” in this Chapter refers to ALL of these cohesive functions. We see cohesion as a natural device, and interpret its various manifestations as simply differing degrees of connectivity on overlapping channels. A central square is a place for social cohesion, whereas a church connects its worshippers to the highest level, which is their creator.

Non-religious societies in some cases successfully substituted secular “sacred spaces” to hold their societies together. For example, communist countries built the “House of the People” or “Workers Club”, which took the role of a gathering place for at least part of the community. In upper-income suburbs (for example, in gated communities) the same forces apply, but are unresolved because of total automobile dependence. There is no sacred space, no common meeting point and place of social interaction. Contrary to the intent of developers who build them, a clubhouse and community swimming pool in

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high-income suburban clusters do not serve this function. The urban geometry never establishes a common social value among the residents, hence leads to a serious lack of socialization.

The sacred place that we are describing is absent from contemporary urban construction (Duany et. al., 2000). We see superficial copies created without any understanding of their deep cultural meaning. Consequently, a dramatic decline in the sense of community leads to a dramatic increase in social alienation. Certainly both the Right and the Left have never recognized the need for spirituality in the fabric of social housing. Nevertheless, a sense of the sacred is inherent in all traditional housing (in some places more, in some places less) independently of their origin. By contrast, military/industrial dormitories are not only rejected by their inhabitants, but are hated because no one can connect with their form and image. A human being cannot truly belong to those buildings, nor can the image of such a building belong emotionally to a human being, and thus people turn to hating them and eventually destroying them. Buildings of this type, built in the 1960s with the very best of intentions, abound around the world. They do not catalyze an emotional attachment to the large scale. Schemes to have “shopping streets” and kindergartens (as a substitute for sacred space) on the fifth floor of high-rise block housing proved ridiculous. Hard concrete plazas tend to be disconnecting and hostile, generating a feeling of anger instead of connectivity.

Christopher Alexander and his collaborators built social housing in Mexicali, Mexico (Alexander et. al., 1985). A prototype house cluster was built around a builder’s yard that served the construction needs of the neighborhood. That could have served as the sacred space. Whereas the houses themselves were a tremendous success (and survive with their original owners years afterwards), the builder’s yard was not. The government failed to maintain it, yet did not give it over to another community or private use. It was abandoned, and its connections to the individual houses sealed off by the owners. The government never helped it to become a gathering place. No effort was made to endow a sacred value to the builder’s yard.

The category of “the sacred” is being defined broadly enough to encompass the normative order of civic spaces, and it is important to include the full spectrum of social relations from the private, to the communal (parochial), to the public (civic). Traditional villages rise to the level of the communal, but NOT to the level of civic culture. Gathering places are important, not simply because they encourage communal cohesion (which tends to be based on homogeneity), but because the range of different types of gathering places allows for a range of different kinds of social relations. Relations in public have as much to do with defining social distance as with cohesion. Often, the cohesion associated with urbanism is mediated only by the sharing of a common sense of place. Places are, in a sense, an embodiment of what we call “social capital”. They ARE social relationships, not just containers or facilitators of social relationships.

There may be a problem with emphasizing the sacred in this discussion. In the third world even more than in places like the USA, the constituencies for social housing are often caught up in some form or another of democratization movement. Particularly in the global cities of the world, we don’t wish to make it sound as if we are promoting a return to the condition of a kind of tribalism (which is the way traditional villages can seem). Places do require materialization of the “sacred”, but not in the common usage of

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the word. Gathering places are important, but their structure (and their relationship to the social structure) is more complex than just acting as the containers or opportunities for people to bond. We need to look at the patterns of interaction in traditional cities as well as tribal villages and settlements that are homogeneous by class. Those patterns of interaction are structurally varied and are not simply about communal cohesion.

In conclusion, a settlement must, above all else, establish a sacred structure by some means, so as to connect emotionally with its residents. Sacred structure also helps people to connect to a higher order. This higher order encompasses three functional features: (a) it is used as a cohesive means to form community; (b) it is constructed upon the cooperation of the discourses of a group of people and is not the unilateral decision of an individual; and (c) it is loaded with a powerful meaning for the community. If most or all residents connect with the physical sacred structure, then they connect indirectly with each other. This simple principle establishes a sense of community, which survives the difficult conditions of life. It keeps forces oriented towards maintaining the physical structure of the community, instead of turning them against the physical structure in those cases when it is not valued.

6. Utilizing the Work of Christopher Alexander. Many times during his long career as architect and urbanist, Christopher Alexander

was asked to plan and construct social housing. In every case, and often in opposition to the brief provided by the government agency that hired him, he insisted on user participation. He clearly saw that this was the only way to produce built forms that are “loved” by their occupants (Alexander, 2005; Alexander et. al., 1985). Each of his projects began with the essential framework of involving future users in planning their living space, and shaping the configuration of streets and common areas. In some cases, this led to the support being withdrawn by the sponsoring government, which surmised that such a scheme would severely weaken its control over the geometry of the project.

We believe that Alexander was entirely right in insisting on participation as a basic principle. He correctly predicted that housing built by someone not involved in the world and daily realities of the resident would lack certain essential qualities. As a result, its inhabitants could never love the place. Even if the houses were all built following exactly the same modular typology, participation in the planning or building process guarantees that the eventual users have a personal stake in the final product. Most people could not care less about a design’s formal virtues: they just want something they can truly consider their own.

Alexander’s most recent work (Alexander, 2005) establishes a temporal ordering for any construction if it is to be adaptive to human needs. That is, it matters enormously what is designed and built before, and what comes after in the sequence of design/construction. This practice was followed since ancient times in the Near East and was codified in Byzantine and Islamic urbanism, which influenced all regions affected by these civilizations (Hakim, 2003). Its scientific foundation as part of the general processes by which a complex system is evolved is a new contribution, and has been theoretically shown to be crucial to the success of any project. It is now possible to outline the correct order in which components of a housing development can be built to

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ensure sustainability. For example, Alexander reveals the steps in designing healthy urban fabric. These of

course depend very much on scale. Since one priority is how a settlement connects to the rest of the city, an area of up to 1 km2 will usually be tangent to one of the main streets, whereas areas larger than that will probably need a major street that goes through them.

1. Major circulation routes are determined as part of the integrative core of the city and the adjacent urban area.

2. Major public spaces are identified to tie in with topography, natural features, and major lines of movement.

3. Secondary street alignments are laid out making 60-150 meter intersections with major streets and spaces.

4. Pedestrian space is defined by the building fronts, and is accessed by, but physically protected from vehicles.

5. Buildings are situated so their front walls define the urban space as coherently as possible — no setbacks, and few gaps.

6. Roads arise as the consequence of linearizing and connecting segments of well-defined urban space. If the living form of the place is to be respected, roads CANNOT be built first, especially if their perceived functional requirements are then allowed to dictate the form, scale, and quality of urban spaces.

Failure to follow this sequence inevitably leads to dead urban fabric. The correct application of this sequence can only come about after convincing the authorities to implement a different construction practice than is usual nowadays. Nevertheless, there are overwhelming theoretical reasons for insisting on this sequence. The steps were followed in countless traditional settlements, forming towns and urban quarters before the era of industrialization. When the main mode of transport is still pedestrian and low-speed traffic (animals, carts, only a few jitney buses and pick-up trucks, etc.) it is easy to give priority to space and buildings. Once the automobile takes over, however, it begins to dictate a new priority, which reverses the above sequence. The planner then sacrifices traditional urban fabric to fast transversal movement, and this ultimately leads to a dysfunctional and unsustainable design.

Alexander has applied these principles in several projects of social housing, including Santa Rosa de Cabal, Colombia (Alexander, 2005: Book 3, pages 398-408) and Guasare New Town, Venezuela (planned but not built) (Alexander, 2005: Book 3, pages 340-348). Another successful recent example is Poundbury, England, by Léon Krier (1998). Interestingly, the latter is an upper-income development, in which a significant fraction (over 20%) of subsidized residents are included; those are financed by the Guinness Trust, a non-governmental organization. We are going to extract working rules from those examples, and present them in this Chapter.

7. Iterative Design and the Emergence of Form. A new community cannot simply be inserted into cleared land (it could, but then it is

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not adaptive, and does not form a community). We envision step-wise growth rather than building everything all at once. The design must be allowed to evolve, and cannot be decided at the beginning. A master plan — in the sense of deciding exactly where future construction is to be placed, and exactly what form it will take — is too restrictive and thus highly incomplete. Social housing that follows this mindset by being planned on paper, and then constructed according to plan fails to form a living environment. Following Alexander, we advocate a process in which every future step is influenced by what exists at that point.

Careful consideration of the topographic features, the existing vegetation, the entry points, etc. should indicate a loose morphology for the entire settlement at the beginning of the planning process. After getting a very rough idea of the placement of buildings and main access road, then individual lots can be envisioned along the roads, which are themselves still not completely specified. Nothing is yet built, and major decisions take place by using wooden stakes and other markers in the ground. In order to guarantee morphological coherence, what is built is influenced by its environment. This interaction is experimentally determined and cannot be worked out on paper or anticipated, due to the complexity of all the mechanisms involved. In a partially built development, the next house or street segment to be built has to adapt its geometry to what was built previously.

Any decisions made at the beginning of the project must be regarded as recommendations, and not as rigid dictates (unlike those in a master plan). As the project develops in time, decisions made at the beginning for unbuilt areas will now seem incorrect, no longer relevant, so we need the possibility of changing the design continuously as more building takes place. This is exactly what occurred in historical communities built over a time span of centuries. This adaptive procedure (adapting to human sensibilities about the emerging forms and spaces) generated extremely coherent complex geometries in traditional villages and towns, and that coherence cannot mathematically be achieved all at once.

An iterative process goes back and forth between steps, improving each one in turn. That’s what we are describing in adaptive planning and design: first form the conceptual idea on the ground, then introduce the position and size of future built elements without yet building them, then go back to refine the urban spaces, and so on. It is only in this way that the interaction of all the components with each other, and with their surroundings, can effectively take place. Once components begin to be built, then they become part of the surroundings, and in turn influence all future built elements.

Healthy urban fabric is an extremely complex system, and it cannot be designed and built in a strictly top-down fashion. Some components could be accomplished top down, by someone who understands the required complexity. The ordering has to be emergent from the process, and not simply an imagined outcome imposed by regulatory fiat. There has to be adaptive capacity that is distributed and pervasive in a process that is inclusive. Cities and neighborhoods are “things that people do together”, where a community exercises its territoriality in a positive manner. Any top-down intervention has to be oriented to facilitating that collaboration, not dictating its terms or forcing it into an overly rationalized container.

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8. Examples of Patterns and Generative Codes. Patterns summarize discovered design solutions that make people most comfortable in

experiencing and using built form. Their relative merit is that they were decided on a firm (in many cases scientifically valid) basis, rather than being just another opinion. The use of patterns and pattern languages is described in the readily available literature (Alexander et. al., 1977). We now describe some patterns for those who may not have seen them before. Mainstream urbanism has neglected the tremendous potential offered by pattern-based design, chiefly for ideological reasons. Pattern-based design liberates the individual but restrains some of the most profitable (though inhuman) aspects of the building industry.

In building dense urban fabric, one pattern imposes a four-storey height limit for residences (Pattern 21: FOUR-STORY LIMIT). Above that height, a resident feels disconnected from the ground, and from any societal functions, which always take place on the ground. This pattern immediately invalidates high-rise apartment blocks, which are simply a failed social experiment on a vast scale, driven by iconic symbolism. Another pattern requires access to trees (Pattern 171: TREE PLACES). Trees are necessary for a human environment, and their planting has to be carefully thought out to cooperate with nearby buildings and define a coherent urban space (Gehl, 1996; Salingaros, 2005). Alternatively, existing large trees must be saved, and buildings introduced in the same careful and flexible manner (and not according to some arbitrary grid), so that the buildings and trees cooperate to create an urban space. The trees combine with the path geometry and external walls to define a usable urban space, whose dimensions and path structure invite use.

The point we are making (summarized in this particular pattern) is to use trees and buildings together to define a sacred place. This is far removed philosophically from planting trees simply as visual “decoration”, which simply reinforces the geometry of power. There is a pragmatic reason for this. Unless a tree is protected by forming part of a sacred place, it will soon be cut down and used as building material, or as fuel for heating and cooking. This idea follows the same principle of protecting cows necessary for plowing by making them sacred animals. Then, the cows are not eaten during a famine, so they can be used for agriculture the following season.

In practice, one chooses several different patterns from Alexander’s “A Pattern Language” (Alexander et. al., 1977), and begins to design the settlement. As work progresses, one has to go back and work with more patterns as different design needs arise. Another set of patterns helps to guide the street layout. Alexander originally used patterns in 1969 to design social housing in Peru (Alexander, 2005: Book 2, page 352). The way that different patterns have to combine together is outlined in (Salingaros, 2005: Chapters 8 & 9). Some architects characterized patterns as an incomplete method, because they could not successfully combine them. Nevertheless, patterns are only one component of a system of design, and their combination has to follow other principles not contained in the patterns themselves. Work by Alexander and others (including the authors) continues to develop the applicability of pattern languages in architecture. Particular insights are being gained from the dramatic success of pattern languages in computer software design.

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A far more serious factor that has worked against the adoption of patterns for design is that architecture and urbanism have, for several decades, rested on a philosophical basis of qualitative relativism. This claims that all judgments in architecture are matters of opinion and taste, and architecture is therefore little more than an act of personal expression. Such relativism is in marked contrast to the insights of science, where discovered facts about the structure of reality are found to underlie matters of apparently individual opinion. Architects and urbanists inculcated in the relativist tradition disregard observable structural effects and evolved solutions. They consider patterns as just another opinion, and one that can be safely ignored (especially as patterns directly contradict the military/industrial typology). But patterns are observable clusters of recurrent configurations of response to recurrent design problems, which constitute a discoverable form of “collective intelligence” in human life and civilization. Note that this collective intelligence has to do with the way we operate in the context of the relationship between built form and our values, aspirations, social practices, etc.

In the age of professional specialization, the built environment has been increasingly subjected to a proliferating array of experts who each bring their discipline to particular kinds of problems. This is often at the expense of the ability to see (much less address) the overall challenge of creating living, beautiful, or sustainable places. The notion of a collective intelligence embodied in patterns should not be understood as a claim to have discovered a final truth, but rather as recognition of the importance of a living process. It re-establishes the cultural capacity to engage in place making as a collaborative social process. Success is not measured in abstract terms, but rather by the local experience of continuous improvement in the quality and sustainability of human settlements. The use of patterns in design provides a necessary foundation for a collaborative method that is adaptive and particular to a place (i.e., the constraints of the moment), yet is also capable of responding to human aspirations for something better.

Even when patterns are used for design, the designer must make sure that the project is worked out and built in the correct sequence. This new approach to planning is based on the realization that the emergence of an adaptive form has to follow a specific sequence of steps. Adaptive design requires a “generative process”. A living design is never imposed: it is generated by a sequence in which each step depends upon all the previous steps. The patterns themselves tell you nothing about the proper sequence, however. For this, one has to go to Alexander’s most recent work (Alexander, 2005). Others support the need for a generative process. Besim Hakim reached this conclusion through the overwhelming evidence available from his research on traditional towns (Hakim, 2003).

9. Construction Strategy. Both pattern languages and generative processes and codes (either explicit or implicit)

have been around for millennia. Pattern languages were codified into practical form thirty years ago. Codes have been used in traditional architecture, and fixed (non-generative) codes widely implemented by one of the authors (Duany & Plater-Zyberk, 2005). Fixed codes are form-based and tell you exactly how to structure the geometry of an urban environment. Generative codes are more recent, and have the additional capability of evolving the form with the project. They tell you the sequence of steps but leave the form

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of the end product unspecified. They also distinguish between an adaptive and a non-adaptive set of codes (i.e. those that either generate, or prevent living urban fabric).

Even though a particular project will require careful adjustment to local conditions, these two methods acting together will serve for most cases. We can begin their immediate application using published material, with on-site experience leading to further refinements in the process. In very broad terms, here is how one can follow our suggestions:

1. Use pattern languages to plan the transportation network long before any building takes place. This is essential for generating village and neighborhood centers. Rigid grids favored by central government do not create the necessary nodal connectivity of the urban quarter.

2. Use pattern languages (and develop new ones appropriate to the locality) to construct a urban quarter for a complex society consisting of children, adults, seniors; and including housing, stores, retail, schools, informal spaces, transportation hubs, etc.

3. Existing simplistic (and consequently antihuman) monofunctional zoning must be rescinded by central government. Without that step, all planning schemes preclude urban life from the beginning, regardless of what they might look like.

4. Encourage construction systems (controlled from the top down) to work with local future residents (working from the bottom up) so as to generate low-cost, higher-quality dwellings.

5. Use pattern languages to rehabilitate existing low-income owner-occupied houses, and to convert current rental units to owner-occupied. This requires an infusion of money, but it also generates construction work.

6. Use pattern languages and the notion of the city as a network to orient interventions globally. Larger-scale and longer-term processes will insure that in addition to building housing, projects are conceived and implemented to complete a sustainable neighborhood, well connected in a larger urban setting.

The process starts with identifying the right land. A major problem is that much informal housing is pushed to marginal and problematic land, on which it can be impossible to upgrade. It is necessary that the architect/planner in charge of the project be knowledgeable in pattern languages and their application. Since most architect/planners today are not, we recommend that, at least for the next several years, governments rely on someone familiar with this material to oversee construction projects. A number of professionals are available with this knowledge, though not enough to satisfy the demand. Hopefully, enough young architects can be trained in the following decades to direct new projects.

One important point concerns building permissions. Because of the organic variability of different components of the project, it is prohibitive in both resources and time to prepare final drawings and get each one of them approved. Planning permission is nowadays usually given for an explicit documented plan specifying every detail of the design, instead of a general process that can produce similar but individual designs. Alexander solved this problem by getting government permission for a specific building process (a set of building operations, within clearly-defined parameters) that generates

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similar but distinct results. All products of that process were thus automatically approved without further need for individual permissions (Alexander et. al., 1985). It is important to get approval from the authorities for the PROCESS rather than for a set of final drawings. If this is not possible, then it is best to get approval for a generally suitable structure that can then be modified under this process.

10. Layout Strategy I: Armature of Services. Following is a rule-based layout strategy that one of us (AMD) has observed working

in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. It offers a template that planners can work with: a simple but effective armature on which a sanitary and humane settlement may self-organize.

What follows are guidelines for the MINIMUM income favela. There are more rules for the next step up in income, including the accommodation of cars. But anything less than this set of rules tends not to work, so they form a core upon which other rules are added.

1. The government must plat lots and grant ownership with paper and recorded deeds. These can begin with “notional” lots that can be defined later through a “generative” process, and surveyed and recorded afterward.

2. Lots should be within blocks defined by a network of street reservations. Each block must have a pedestrian alley reservation at the rear of all the lots. Lots may vary in size and shape but should not be less that 6 m wide and 20 m deep.

3. The government must grade the land within the block so that it drains to the street. The streets must in turn be graded to drain away from the inhabited area.

4. The government must build concrete sidewalks on both sides of the street reservation (but not necessarily pave the streets). The channel formed between the sidewalks will contain the draining rainwater. The streets also provide firebreaks.

5. At a minimum of one place on the alley, there must be a tall pole with electrical supply from which the residents can connect themselves and freely use the electricity. Do the same with a couple of clean water spigots. There should be one large latrine (with gender separation) per block. One can start taxing collectively for these services once construction is well under way.

6. The lots, as they are built out, should retain a clear passage from alley to street. This encourages rooms with windows and also allows the lot and the block to drain to the street.

7. The residents will construct their buildings themselves, at their own rate; but they must build at the edge of the sidewalk first. The rear comes later. One can require that the frontage wall be concrete block. Their roofs must not drain to a neighboring lot.

8. Corner lots are reserved for shops. All lots can be live/work units.

9. Non-criminal commercial initiatives and private transit operations must not be prohibited (even better to actively encourage them).

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10. The various government and resident responsibilities listed above are established by a simple contract: “The government will do this … the resident will do this …”

11. It is possible to ask the residents to pay for the lots, after construction is done, a small quantity at a time.

In addition, there are many social control issues that we are not going to deal with here, but which need to be empirically observed. This is only a physical code, and thus only part of the whole solution that will make the project livable. The establishment of legal boundaries is a government function. But it should not be assumed that we propose to do this first, as a top-down act. Laying out the plots involves preliminary owner participation. The really remarkable thing about the morphology of owner-planned places is the power of their self-organization, which is the process that Alexander’s generative codes are trying to exploit.

11. Layout Strategy II: Generative Code. Alexander (2005: Book 3) has applied more advanced “generative codes” to projects,

and we summarize here part of his procedure. This is a more incremental version of the “armature of services” layout methodology described previously.

Alexander observed the self-organizing processes that have created many informal settlements throughout human history, and sought to develop rule-based “generative codes” to exploit these processes. Their natural geometry is so strong that in looking at an aerial view of Querétaro, Mexico, for example (where one of us conducts research), the urban morphology of the informal settlements looks very much like widely admired villages of Provence in France or Tuscany in Italy. They all have subtleties of adaptation to terrain, view, differentiation of commercial functions, and other autopoietic (self-organizing) features.

The challenge is not to build on a tabula rasa (i.e., by first wiping everything clean) a structure based on a template in advance, but to get plumbing and other humane elements into these already-complex and sophisticated “medieval cities”. We want the organic complexity and adaptive character of “bottom-up” activity, with some of the standards and conditions of social equity that have typically relied on “top-down’ interventions. There is a way to lay these out sequentially, iteratively, according to a simple series of rules, as the generative codes propose to do. After that is accomplished, then the result is surveyed and the boundaries are recorded for legal purposes.

A generative layout, including streets, establishes the plots according to topography, existing natural features, and the psychological perception of optimal flow as determined by walking the ground. Then the platting process follows — not the reverse. That would be the Alexandrian approach to “medieval cities with plumbing”. Although it could all occur in advance, as part of a “generative code” process by the community, it just has to be stepwise. Layout should not be template-based or designed to look nice from an airplane. To get the emergent complexity of a living neighborhood, it has to be iterative, and determined on-site. You have to really be sure the organic unfolding can happen, which is not easy in a rigidly codified world. We have the challenge of conjuring good processes out of circumstances that present many constraints and obstacles.

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This of course reflects the medieval pattern of laying out streets and lots. It also follows Léon Krier’s dictum that the buildings and social spaces come first, then the streets (Krier, 1998). In medieval cities, the process was highly regulated. A grid-based city can also be well ordered: our point is to use the most adaptive grid for the location, which grows from the terrain. The practical implementation of even a radical generative process is not as difficult as one might think. One gets around the legal problems posed by conventional subdivision law by creating rough “plug” lots that are then laid out in detail according to the generative process; then the plat is made final with a series of lot-line adjustments and right-of-way dedications. There is usually some way to override the conventional processes to achieve this kind of thing, but the government must be supportive and not block the process because it departs from established practice.

Getting into more detail about the layout, the main street has to be laid out approximately based on the topography and connection to the outside. Next, decide on the urban spaces, envisioned as pedestrian nodes of activity connected by streets. Next, side streets that feed the main street are decided — even though streets are still only indicated using stakes in the ground. Next, define the house positions (not yet the lot; just the building) using stakes in the ground, so that the front wall reinforces the urban spaces. Each family now decides the total plan of its house so as to enclose a patio and garden in the back. This process is constrained by adjoining streets, alleys, neighbors, and is meant to make the eventual patio and garden spaces as coherent as possible — semi-open spaces that feel comfortable to be in and work in, and not just leftover space. This finally fixes the lot, which is then recorded. Plans are drawn from stakes in the ground.

As lot lines begin to be decided, then the streets can begin to form more definitely in plan (but not yet built). Streets are meant to connect and feed segments of urban space, which themselves are defined by house fronts. (Note that this is the opposite of positioning the houses to follow an existing street). Flexibility in the street design will be retained until houses are actually built. Clearly, you are not going to see many straight streets running across all the development (to the shock of government bureaucrats), because they have not been dawn on the plan at the beginning. Nor do streets need to have a uniform width: they open up to urban spaces. Streets evolve as the whole development evolves. Now begin construction. First build the sidewalks, then the houses, and pave the streets last — if at all.

A more detailed layout sequence in included in the Appendix.

SECTIONS 12-16: PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS FOR MAKING PROJECTS WORK.

12. The Role of the Architect/Coordinator. Our experience with construction projects leads us to propose an administrative rule.

That is to make a single individual responsible for achieving the “humanity” of an individual project. The government or non-governmental agency funding the project will appoint this person, who will oversee the design and construction, and will coordinate user participation. We suggest that this task not be delegated to an existing employee of

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the government bureaucracy, or to an employee of a construction company, for the simple reason that such persons don’t have the necessary expertise in the design process we are advocating. Ideally, it should be a person who has a professional understanding of these issues, and who has an independent professional sense of responsibility to oversee their proper implementation.

This architect/project manager will be responsible for making the difference between creating a military/industrial appearance, versus a human, living feeling in the final project as built. Again, this is not a matter of aesthetics (which would be immediately dismissed by the funding agency as irrelevant to poor people) but of basic survival. A project perceived by its inhabitants as hostile will eventually be destroyed by them, and in the meantime destroys their own sense of self. As much as we believe in collaboration, it has been shown that people in need of social housing don’t always have the organizational capacity to work together to get the project done. Their input is absolutely necessary in the planning stages, but here we are talking about someone on the “outside” who will be responsible to the residents, and who will carry the responsibility of insuring their wellbeing when pressured to cut costs and streamline the construction process.

A crucial part of the role of the project manager has to be defined in terms of multi-layered facilitation of the process. The project manager will often need not only to encourage engagement, but also to teach it to people who are not used to it, and who may lack the habits and skills of effective participatory action. Participants may come to the process with a deep distrust of any method that relies on the efforts of others. Part of the challenge in a new settlement, therefore, will be to create an orderly, reliable, and effective collaborative process that can engage a population — but such people may well be traumatized as the result of prior dislocations and social upheavals. One cannot assume that a pre-existing community will have already established the necessary norms and commitments required for such engagement. The project manager’s role will inevitably involve a certain amount of what is commonly called “community building”, organizing, and leadership training.

When the project is complete, the architect/project manager should get a fee for his/her job, adjusted to the degree that it is well done. Resident feedback rather than declarations by architectural critics should be used as a basis for judging this success. It is not unlikely that a project will prove to be sustainable and successful for decades to come, but will be condemned by narrow-minded ideologues as looking “old-fashioned”, or as resembling a favela too closely for political comfort. Many people in power have fixed visual notions of what a “clean, industrial, modern” city ought to look like — based on outmoded and irrelevant scientific concepts — and refer back to those utopian images when judging a living environment.

We are in fact advocating a bottom-up social approach with a strictly top-down intermediate administrative level. Unless a clear responsibility and autonomous administrative system is laid down, what we wish to see accomplished will never get done. The impersonal government bureaucracy will never take the trouble to make a place human and livable; it can more easily just follow uncreative rules of modularity and mechanical combination. The construction group is not responsible: it wants to finish its job in the minimum time and make the least number of adjustments. The residents are not politically powerful to guarantee a livable environment. Within the realities of

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construction, a project requires an advocate with the power to coordinate all of these forces.

13. The Need for Adaptable Materials. A major though neglected factor behind the choice of materials is their emotional

attractiveness to the user. Wealthy people pay a lot for “friendly” materials so that their surroundings give back emotional nourishment. Self-built housing follows the same unconscious principles, using inexpensive and discarded materials in imaginative ways to create an emotionally satisfying environment (arrogantly dismissed as merely “primitive” artistic expression). Contrast this with the hostile surfaces regularly chosen for social housing in an effort to make those structures more durable. Such “hard” materials and surfaces give the impression of dominance and rejection. It is possible to create durable yet friendly surfaces, even though planners have not thought it worthwhile to take the trouble to do that for social housing.

To complicate things further, the issue of desired building materials runs straight into hidden prejudices and images of self-esteem, often culturally specific and perhaps even locally particular. Controlling agencies in some cases ban what they consider to be “low status” building materials, such as Adobe (whose surface is both “friendly” and easily shaped, unlike concrete). But in many cases, it is the owner/builders themselves who shun those adaptable materials in regions where they are used in traditional construction. Hassan Fathy simply could not get poor people to accept living in traditional mud houses (Fathy, 1973). This is a major problem worldwide. It’s the image — representing the despised past instead of the promised utopian future.

The ultimate solution to this problem must be cultural. Citizens must rediscover pride in their own heritage and building traditions, and the great value and pleasure they afford. At the same time, the myth of a utopian technological approach must be exposed for what it is — a marketing image meant for the gullible public — while the real benefits of modernity are shown to be entirely compatible with traditional practices (e.g. plumbing, electricity, appliances, etc). In this way, we can regenerate the “collective intelligence” embodied in cultural traditions, and infuse it with the best new adaptations.

As the author Jorge Luis Borges put it: “between the traditional and the new, or between order and adventure, there is no real opposition; and what we call tradition today is a knitwork of centuries of adventure”.

When a government builds social housing, it wants to solve two problems at once: to house people who lack the means to house themselves, and to use up industrial materials so as to stimulate the economy. There is a very good reason for the latter, as the government is plugged into the largest manufacturers of industrial building materials. It is in the interest of the economy to consume these materials in sponsored projects. Nevertheless, that may not be the best solution for the housing. There are two reasons for this: one having to do with economics, and the other with emotional connection.

An owner-built favela uses cheap, disposable materials such as wood, cardboard, corrugated metal sheets, rocks, plastic, left-over concrete blocks, etc. While there is an obvious deficiency with the impermanence of such materials (which turns catastrophic

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during storms or flooding), their tremendous advantage is their adaptability. Owner-builders have an enormous freedom of determining the shape and details of their dwellings. They utilize that design freedom to adapt the built structure to human sensibilities. That is not possible when a government builds house modules out of a much more durable material such as reinforced concrete. People must be able to make changes as a matter of principle. Here we have the opposition between permanence/rigidity and impermanence/freedom, which influences the form of buildings.

Social housing should be made of permanent materials, whereas cheap, fragile buildings are a disservice to people. Favelas built out of sticks and cardboard are unacceptable models to follow. Nevertheless, we wish to preserve as much as possible the DESIGN FREEDOM inherent in using more impermanent materials. That is essential to guarantee the design adjustments that will generate a living geometry. In the best self-built houses, every scrap of material is utilized in a very precise manner so as to create living urban fabric — a sophisticated process that compares with the greatest architectural achievements anywhere. The only solution we see to this conflict is for the government to provide appropriate materials (permanent, but also easy to arrange, cut, and shape) that the users can then employ in constructing or modifying their own homes.

We always come back to the competition between permanence and adaptability. Adaptive changes to form are akin to repair and self-healing in an organism, but are often misinterpreted as a degradation of the project. In fact, the geometry is trying to heal itself (through human action) after the imposition of unnatural, alien forms. This is a natural organic evolution, and should not be discouraged simply because it contradicts an architect’s “pure” vision of how people SHOULD live. We most emphatically condemn as inhuman the present practice of forbidding any modifications to social housing by their residents. Tied in to our suggestions for ownership, we uphold the fundamental right for an owner/resident to modify his/her dwelling to any extent without impinging on the rights of neighbors or the public space.

While the original intent of legislation forbidding changes to one’s dwelling was sound, it never achieved its goal. Its aim was to legally prevent the destruction of buildings that the government had invested money in. This has never worked, however. Buildings that are hated by their residents (because of their hostile geometry and surfaces) have been systematically vandalized and destroyed, and no legislation has been able to prevent this. The ever-escalating use of hard materials only led to fortress-like housing units, but their residents hate them even more and eventually destroy them. Oppressive surfaces and spaces damage one’s sense of wellbeing, thus provoking a hostile reaction. The solution lies in a different direction altogether: make housing units that are loved by their residents, who will then maintain them instead of destroying them.

In his project in Mexicali, Mexico, Alexander introduced an innovative method of creating bricks on site using a hand-operated press and local earth (Alexander et. al., 1985). He emphasized this as a crucial aspect of the project, even though concrete blocks were readily available. One reason was to establish a local supply for all future residents. Concrete blocks are not expensive, but they still set up a financial threshold. Another reason is that they also narrow the design possibilities. Standard concrete blocks lead to standard structural configurations, ruling out some of the adaptive shapes and processes that Alexander wished to introduce.

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There are opportunities for the building industry to participate through government directed efforts in these new social housing projects, by providing industrialized elements that can be included with versatility in many cases. One of the authors (EPP) has developed a model for self-construction using cheap and ubiquitously available materials such as rammed earth for the perimeters, together with the introduction of low-cost industrialized sanitary modules that include water storage, toilet, sink and shower along with a filter for gray-water treatment for recycling. The proposed modules may also have structural uses, and include solar cells for electricity and solar panels for water heating and even cooking. These industrialized modules can be massively produced, lowering costs and providing technology, while at the same time allowing the necessary flexibility and freedom of design and evolution of the units.

One of us (AMD) has investigated this concept more recently for a project in Kingston, Jamaica. This “wet appliance” cost-effectively delivers the sanitary and mechanical cores, the most expensive elements of a home, while combining the ability of homeowners to build their own well-adapted dwelling.

We should mention a case where such industrial modules were reduced in complexity so that the building could be initially more adaptive to social needs. Alexander in 1980 worked on building social housing in India, and considered using a prefabricated concrete box containing plumbing for bath, toilet, and kitchen (Alexander, 2005: Book 2, page 320). This solution followed successful earlier projects by Balkrishna V. Doshi. It soon became clear, however, that building a solid plinth (a platform representing a traditional pattern) for each house was actually more important in the building sequence (because it was a priority for the residents) than having the plumbing box. So Alexander decided to spend the limited available money on the terrace, leaving a groove for future plumbing additions. Residents were able to use communal water and toilets until they could build their own facilities. The platform was more vital to the family’s life than the plumbing box.

14. Funding Strategy Concentrates on the Small Scale. Social housing construction cannot be financed entirely by the residents, thus a

government or non-governmental entity has to step in and shoulder the costs. In itself, this simple dependence raises issues that affect the shape of the construction. Involving future residents in building their own houses will reduce the initial monetary outlay. The more money invested by an external agency in social housing, however, the more control it will wish to exert over the final product. This natural consequence inevitably leads to the subconscious adoption of a geometry of control, as was outlined in a previous section.

We can offer a few alternatives: 1. Funding sources now determine social housing morphology. Central government,

wanting to build in the most efficient manner, reverts to a highly prescriptive approach, and is willing to sacrifice complexity of form. That attitude cannot generate an urban quarter. We need to develop a flexible, performance-based standard for morphology. We also need to identify alternative sources of funding to break the prescriptive monopoly, and thereby to break out of this antipattern.

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2. Raise funds from various sources in order to ensure that homes are affordable to neighborhood residents. A private-public partnership is the most effective way of using the market economy to generate an urban quarter, instead of a monolithic monster favored by government bureaucracy.

3. Involvement with non-governmental organizations will keep a suspicious central government from sabotaging the use of pattern languages in building an urban quarter, or in converting an existing dysfunctional project into an urban quarter.

We are sadly aware of numerous projects of social housing that do not serve the poor, but are simply investment opportunities for the builder or landowner to siphon money from the government. If the government subsidizes rents, then the opportunity does exist for speculative building that will recover initial construction investments (with interest) from rents alone. In such cases, the physical condition of the residents is of little importance. Moreover, the maintenance and future condition of the built fabric is not a part of the profit equation, since there is no expectation of recovering investment from the building structures themselves. It is usually expected that the buildings will decay, thus encouraging non-permanent construction from the very beginning. Clearly, subsidized rents can work against humane social housing, contradicting the intention of the original legislation.

Often, feasible, sustainable, and affordable solutions are rejected for reasons of excessive greed. Good affordable housing has the disadvantage that profit margins are always low (unless the market is manipulated to create an artificial scarcity). If the government or the developers fail to see opportunities to get rich in the process, they may decide to withdraw support from a project, even if they have pledged their support initially. You need a profit to encourage participation, but that has to be balanced with the payback from solving a serious societal problem.

Involvement with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) requires that housing authorities build not only public-private partnerships for redevelopment, but also elaborate networks of local partners. All of these benefit from the allocated money. However, one of the weaknesses here is that, while agencies have been good at getting the local social service providers and city agencies to cooperate, they have not been so good at engaging the support of the tenants. Most social service providers are still operating according to the old model of service provision, rather than the newer emerging models of “community based” solutions to a wide variety of problems. The old social service model engages people in networks based on their particular pathologies (and there is a whole service industry that depends on what people lack). The new model engages people based on their gifts and what they bring to the network (and not what they “need”). This new model, based on the idea of asset-based community development, has had wide application in public health, and more generally in community organizing.

We also face a problem with funding sources that wish to minimize the administrative burden by concentrating on the large scale. It is far easier to give out money in one large sum than to track the same amount divided and distributed out to many different borrowers. Reducing the number of transactions takes precedence over other systems based upon supply and demand. Nevertheless, it is crucial to have exactly this micro-funding flexibility for the people to be able to build their own houses. Repair of an

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existing neighborhood requires a vast number of small interventions. Promising work has been done in developing effective management systems to permit such micro-loans (e.g. the Grameen Bank). Again, this is actually a more sophisticated and more advanced financial model, as it is more highly differentiated.

Earlier in this Chapter, we mentioned the obstacle posed by ingrained geometrical images of control. Those are also tied to a deep prejudice against the small scale. A government project takes a certain overhead to administer, which is independent of the size of the project. Naturally, bureaucrats wish to minimize the total number of projects, which leads them to approve a few very large projects. For example, faced with building a new urban quarter, they wish to build it as large as possible, and all at the same time, so as to economize on the bureaucratic overhead. That approach contradicts our suggestions of building an urban quarter one small piece at a time, and iterating back and forth between the design steps.

15. Working Within the Existing System. The planning and building system as it exists today creates and perpetuates a

dependence that is difficult — and in most cases, impossible — to break. By raising building standards beyond the point that can be reasonably satisfied by self-builders, it shifts the whole housing industry from being local and small-scale, to being large-scale. Building-code standards have evolved in response to real and serious threats to health and safety. Like many such technological systems, however, their unintended consequences are not trivial, and can be disastrous. This is happening today in the rebuilding of the American Gulf region after Hurricane Katrina.

The system in place works to benefit both government bureaucrats and larger contractors, who are often tied by mutual support. But what is seen as a benefit to a commercial/government system can spell disaster for another, major segment of society. One of us (AMD) has argued for a reconstruction of the Katrina devastation, using a strategy that allows the same social processes to flourish as before (Duany, 2007). That strategy faces daunting challenges because of the building, financing, and regulatory system now in place.

Many of the houses destroyed in the hurricane, particularly those in lower-income neighborhoods, were self-built and did not meet current code or financing standards. The urban fabric was the product of a relaxed process of self-building over generations, with the advantage that it was not based on debt. This was a society of debt-free homeowners, whose lives could be structured around activities of their choice (Duany, 2007). Those houses were outside the system, because their non-conforming construction made them impossible to mortgage. The system now requires a contract of debt, since the new building standards cannot be met without commercial intervention. In most cases, this means that the government has to step in and build social housing, solving a problem that it itself has created (Duany, 2007). The cycle of unintended consequences goes on.

To quote from Duany (2007): “The hurdle of drawings, permitting, contractors, inspections — the professionalism of it all — eliminates self-building. Somehow there must be a process whereupon people can build simple, functional houses for themselves,

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either by themselves or by barter with professionals. There must be free house designs that can be built in small stages and that do not require an architect, complicated permits, or inspections; there must be common-sense technical standards. Without this there will be the pall of debt for everyone. And debt in the Caribbean doesn’t mean just owing money — it is the elimination of the culture that arises from leisure.”

While this may be “leisure” by today’s middle-class standards, it represents a hard life for a thriving and vibrant cultural fabric that is simply neglected by (even though it is a direct part of) the conventional economy. Inhabitants of the modern middle-class the world over take a debt-driven system for granted: much of their working life is spent just to pay off the house mortgage. In fact, the system works to preclude other options for putting a roof over one’s head. The middle class attains liberation from the financial system only after retirement, when the 30-year mortgage has been finally paid off. Self-built housing erected by cash and barter is an escape from this system, and is viewed by the government and big contractors as a threat to their hegemony. It’s a structural problem, not one of malevolent intent. Debt is key, but is just one variable of an interlocking system.

It is not easy to implement such innovations, because most countries and regions already have a well-established system that produces rigidly inhuman social housing (but which it believes, on the contrary, to be an enlightened and progressive solution). Many times in our projects, the first thing that we had to do is to begin studying the existing housing delivery systems so that we can override them. Those systems are created by interlocked bureaucracies, specialists, financial institutions, political entities, etc. You can build on the physical tangibles, but not on the systems. There is much that must be bypassed first — and they will resist their own dismissal.

We (the team of urbanists) cannot get directly involved in these strategies, which are the responsibility of the client and supporting organizations. The local entities have to solve procedural problems and forge alliances that will sustain the project, with us acting as a catalyst for change. One small section, or various independent units within the government could be promoting our project, while facing opposition from the rest of the bureaucracy. Most of the time, the problems with innovative social housing solutions are not technical, social, or even financial: they are almost always political.

You can try to force changes in design approach, and some good might come of it, but that only gets you so far. A project tends to become a power struggle, taking time and effort away from building. Alternatively, we can try to cooperate with the system, bringing stakeholders and facilitators together in unexpected ways. But this requires that we recognize working with an existing system as a different kind of problem — not linear, but multi-variable, and “cultural”. It is necessary to be more embedded into the local operating system (a strong existing culture) in order to solve those problems, to have any chance of seeing where the levers are (so we can pull them to affect changes), and to see how decisions are made at various levels.

In most cases, a successful strategy will combine aspects of “working within the system” and reforming the system from the outside. In making an assessment, the first crucial step is to lay out the critical limitations we find in an existing system of production. Then we should work to negotiate a “workaround” that addresses those

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limitations from the beginning, before attempting to dismantle the existing system entirely. It may indeed be necessary to radically transform the existing system, but that is a separate problem from the design and building of urban fabric, and we don’t want to spend all our energies on fighting the system. On the other hand, if workarounds are not possible, there may be little alternative but to press for systemic reform.

Alexander (2005: Volume 2, page 536) shares his own experience with this struggle. In generating projects over a thirty-year period, he realized that a major shortcoming was that their implementation demanded too much. “In our early experiments, we often went to almost unbelievable lengths to get some new process to be implemented, and to get it to work. But the amount of effort we had to make to get it to work — the very source of our success — was also the weakness of what we achieved. In too many cases, the magnitude of special effort that had to be made to shore up a new process was massive — too great, to be easily or reasonably copied.”

Alexander in each case succeeded by replacing an existing system combining procedure, process, attitude, and working rules with an entirely different system. But the effort required to change the entire system, even in cases where it succeeded, was not easily repeatable. He concludes that here, like in a scientific experiment, it is the REPEATABILITY that is important, not the unique occurrence. If the process is not easily repeatable, then ultimately it is not as useful. Therefore, if a production method has too many components that are totally different from the previously working system, then it is not easily accommodated within the old method. It cannot be copied widely in regions where the old methodology still applies.

A genetic analogy, proposed by Alexander, suggests ways of achieving success in the long term. A process presented as a complete, complex system (like the genetic code for a whole organism), requires that its implementation must be either all or none. In that case, the existing system of implementation must change so as to allow the project to be built. If, on the other hand, our process is presented (and understood) as a collection of semi-independent pieces, each of which can be implemented rather easily, then there is a greater chance that one of more of those pieces will catch on. Small groups of practitioners, moreover, could apply each piece of the process, without requiring the support of the system. It is Alexander’s hope that easily copied pieces of the methodology will spread independently, and that eventually this diffusion process will lead to an entire new “operating system” over time.

16. Maintenance Strategy Concentrates on the User. Unless provisions are made at the beginning for the continued maintenance of the built

environment, it will turn dysfunctional. Favelas and social housing projects can have very serious problems, but some are clearly less successful in a social sense than others, and their physical deterioration is seen to increase with time. This idea is in keeping with the organic conception of the urban fabric. All living entities require continual upkeep and repair: it is part of being alive. Here we may distinguish the two main components of life itself as separated into genetic and metabolic mechanisms. Genetic processes build the organism in the first place, whereas metabolic processes keep it running and also repair it continuously.

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The same processes, or their close analogues, apply to the urban fabric as an organic entity. Once built, it has to incorporate within itself the mechanisms for its maintenance. Maintenance does not come from a top-down process. We are disappointed at the widespread neglect of the forces responsible for the temporal evolution of urban fabric, and what is required to maintain it in healthy order. Many people somehow have an unrealistic, static conception of urban form. The organic model leads to several recommendations:

1. Encourage and support tenants to maintain their dwellings, by ensuring an emotional connection from the very beginning. The traditional subsidized rental solution has been disastrous. It is unlikely for a tenant to value a faceless material structure owned by someone else. It is possible, however, to establish a sense of collective ownership and responsibility. In a rental situation, it is all the more important to create conditions for effective and meaningful collective control and self-management. Literal ownership isn’t always necessary. A stakeholder, in the usual sense, can also be somebody with a sense of ownership in the process.

2. Make it possible to own an affordable home, even if it is the most primitive type of dwelling. Encourage government financial underwriting, seen as a sound future investment that prevents social housing from being destroyed by its tenants.

3. Establish a strict legislated code of responsibility for the residents. The key to the success of such a code is that the residents must have a sense of ownership of the code. It is crucial that they participate in its formulation, and be part of its enforcement. Owners can be held accountable for maintaining their environment, whereas this is more difficult to achieve with renters. Since supply can never meet demand, owners can be made to care for their dwellings.

4. An observed rule of urbanism is that the level of provided services is proportional to the level of regulations and restrictions. Favelas get no services, and also have no regulations. At the other extreme, high-income gated communities get many services, but are also highly regulated.

The ability of tenants to maintain their dwellings cannot be achieved by requiring them to put in work time organized by a central authority (with the ability to evict them for noncompliance). “Maintenance” has to be connected to “governance.” In the redevelopment of Columbia Point, Boston, the development company signed an agreement that split the management responsibilities with the residents — 50/50 control. The traditional problem with public housing has been that people would maintain the inside of their dwellings, but there was no collective capacity to take responsibility for the outside. The “defensible space” solution was to privatize or do away with public areas as much as possible — a step expressed in the project’s geometry. That, however, led to increasing isolation and a fundamental change towards an introverted society.

The better solution is simply a pattern of well-defined distinctions between public and private realms, PLUS a collective capacity to take responsibility for the public space. Some of that capacity has to do with design that facilitates “eyes on the street” (front porches, windows, etc.) but the eyes on the street only matter if they are backed up by conditions of trust, reciprocity, and collective efficacy. People often forget that Jane Jacobs’ neighborhood worked not only because people could watch the street, but also

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because people had a sense of obligation as members of a certain kind of community (Jacobs, 1961). She described a characteristic of social environments that is now talked about in terms of “social capital”. This is how one creates an effective “code of responsibility”. If you try to impose it (as the housing authorities often do), then you get widespread noncompliance in the face of which no enforcement mechanism (no matter how intrusive) will work.

Ownership of homes does seem to be a good thing to encourage, from all the evidence. However, it is not true that renters can’t be held accountable for maintaining their environment. Owners can be held accountable in so far as they have equity in their house, which means that they are motivated by concern for the exchange value embodied in their property. Renters can also have a stake in a place, but only if the social relationships involved are not reduced to the cold cash nexus — that is, a certain amount of square footage for a certain monthly fee. It is possible (and often happens) that renters can build up their “investment” in the use value of a place, depending on the extent to which they benefit from the specific networks of social relations that define the neighborhood. (Notice that Jane Jacobs’ neighborhood wasn’t a neighborhood of owners.)

It is also important to include a mix of rental and home ownership opportunities. Not everybody wants to encumber themselves with the responsibilities of home ownership, and not everybody can afford to maintain a house. One of the things accomplished in “social housing” should be that the everyday costs of housing are socialized, and not just the purchase price. Think about the way the co-housing movement has done the same thing. Some of the ideas from the co-housing movement might be incorporated in helping to insure maintenance.

(For those unfamiliar with this term, co-housing refers to a cluster of houses around shared common land, which usually includes a shared building for meetings and common meals — see Pattern 37: HOUSE CLUSTER in Alexander et. al. (1977). In our experience, the pattern works best when middle-class residents are strongly linked by common religious belief, as in Israeli Kibbutzim or some Christian sects. On the other hand, having poverty in common is not by itself a sufficient unifying factor!)

SECTIONS 17-21: SOME OF THE PROBLEMS FACING US.

17. Retrofitting and Sanitizing the Favela: Problems and Solutions. Although this Chapter analyzes the process of constructing NEW social settlements,

our approach could be adjusted to retrofit the favela. In ecological terms, we embrace and learn from our competition (the “species” in the lowest ecological stratum of urbanism) instead of trying to exterminate it. Governments wish that favelas would simply disappear (refusing even to draw them on city maps), and their residents spontaneously move to the countryside, but powerful global economic forces ensure that this is not going to happen. We, as urbanists concerned with housing the poor, must accept favelas as a social and urban phenomenon, and try to make the best of an existing situation.

It is not always possible or even desirable to accept an existing favela and make it into a better place to live. First, it is often the case that squatter settlements have grown on

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polluted or toxic ground, on unstable soil, on steep slopes, or in a flood area. Periodically, their inhabitants are killed by natural disasters, and there is little that can be done to retrofit a settlement on dangerous ground in order to make it safer. Second, squatter settlements invade natural preserves that are necessary for regenerating oxygen needed for the entire city. These are the “lungs” of an urban population, and they must be preserved from encroachment and destruction. Third, squatter settlements produce pollution and human waste that damages the rest of the city. This problem cannot be ignored. Even if the government does not wish to legitimize a particular favela, helping it to treat its waste benefits the whole city.

Let us assume for the moment that social problems (which are particularly rampant in a favela) can be tackled independently of problems arising from urban and architectural form. One can easily go into an existing settlement and try to repair it, with the help of its current residents. John F. C. Turner (1976) did exactly that, setting a precedent for several successful interventions in Latin America, especially in Colombia. The only obstacle — and it is a profound one — is the philosophical conviction that the favela’s geometry is out of place in a modern society. Under that mind set, any “repair” turns into annihilation and replacement. We need to truly understand the process of repair and self-healing of urban fabric, uninfluenced by current preconceptions.

Disagreeing with conventional planning beliefs, we accept the geometry of the favela, and point out its main deficiencies: a lack of services, sanitation, and natural features. In most cases the urban fabric is perfectly adapted to the topography and natural features of the landscape (simply because the owner-builders didn’t have access to bulldozers and dynamite). What is usually lacking, however, is space for trees and green. The sad truth is that most trees are cut down and used as building materials. Vegetation competes with people for space. The poverty of the favela often includes poverty in plant life: it is a luxury here because of the extreme living conditions. Even so, many residents will try to maintain a little garden if that’s at all possible.

Our method is highly flexible, and its principles remain valid even if the situation changes. A series of steps, taken a few at a time (and therefore very economical) can repair the favela’s complex urban fabric. More than anything, we advocate a process of REINFORCEMENT, adopting much of the evolved geometry where it appears to work, and intervening to replace pathological structures. Plumbing and sanitary facilities are essential. Sidewalks are most important, and are sorely needed in a favela, which is primarily a pedestrian realm. Having real sidewalks raises the favela to a more permanent, “higher-class” urban typology. The existing building fronts determine exactly where the sidewalks should be built. Streets in a favela are usually of poor quality, if they are even paved, so electricity, sewerage, and water networks could be introduced under the streets. After many buildings are reinforced, one might finally pave the street.

Taking some straightforward sanitary measures can minimize filth and disease. One does not have to bulldoze a favela to get a healthier neighborhood. Doing that will certainly not raise the income level of its residents, nor improve their social condition. Putting the same people into concrete bunker apartments may look good in a photo, but actually cuts their societal connections, ultimately making their situation worse. We know that when poor people are forcibly moved from a human-scaled neighborhood into high-rise blocks, their social cohesion worsens catastrophically. On the other hand, many

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social problems are simply not solvable by urban morphology alone. A favela is usually built of flimsy, impermanent materials. The government can help its

residents to gradually rebuild their houses using more permanent materials. We don’t imply here replacing the typology of their house, but replacing say, the unstable roof or the walls (taking this opportunity to insert plumbing and electricity). A house made of cardboard and corrugated tin can be reconstructed in a very similar form using bricks, concrete blocks, and more solid panels provided cheaply by the government. Sometimes, the residents are only waiting until they get a legal deed to the land they live on; then they rebuild their homes using more permanent materials and financed by their accumulated savings. Otherwise, they are reluctant to invest anything more than the barest minimum in the structure.

Some readers will object to our accepting the overcrowding that is usual in a slum, and may even be outraged that we suggest maintaining this high density. Here we need to study high-density upper-income settlements in the same society, to decide how much density can be easily tolerated. It’s not the high density by itself that is objectionable; it is the difficult living conditions that result from such density. It turns out that portions of high-density urban fabric can be maintained when it is made more sanitary. Unfortunately, such suggestions have been planning anathema up until now.

In some places, accepting the favela and legalizing its plots has come under sharp criticism from social activists who see this as a facile solution for a government to take. The accusation is that by simply legitimizing an unhealthy slum, the government abnegates its responsibility of building more permanent social housing. In our opinion, the magnitude of the social housing problem is so vast as to be near insoluble. The simple economics put a comprehensive solution out of reach. Our approach proceeds with one step at a time, retrofitting those portions of favelas that can be made healthy, while at the same time building new housing following an organic paradigm. If these steps succeed, then they can be repeated indefinitely, progressing towards a long-term amelioration.

Banks, governments, and building companies are captivated by economies of scale, and are less sensitive to economies of place and of differentiation needed to repair a neighborhood. Wielding a blunt and relatively primitive economic instrument, they would prefer to wipe out the neighborhood and build it all over again. It is much less trouble, and less costly in crude monetary terms, to do this. But of course, the unsustainability of this lopsided economic model (and its terrible cost to society) is becoming painfully evident.

Governments are reluctant to bother with small-scale urban interventions, but instead sponsor only large-scale ones since it saves them accounting costs (Salingaros, 2005: Chapter 3). And yet, living urban fabric has to be maintained by an enormous number of small-scale interventions, which is an essential part of the process of organic repair. Institutions such as banks (with an exception noted earlier, micro-financing by the Grameen Bank) are generally unwilling to bother with small loans meant for small-scale building in poor neighborhoods. All banks, however, operate also on a small scale administering small accounts and loans. They possess the technical ability to service small loans, doing it routinely with credit cards, car loans, and personal lines of credit. Technology has evolved in the direction of differentiation and customization, aided in

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part by revolutions in software technology. Those innovations have yet to be applied in the realm of social housing, which still tends to follow the inflexible old institutional formats.

On a more positive note, many groups have discovered small-scale solutions of tremendous value. For example, in recent years concepts such as micro-financing, micro energy generation, mother centers, technology centers, urban farming, composting toilets, and other ideas have been successfully implemented. These small-scale processes can eventually make a hugely positive difference to both favelas and social housing. They are all in keeping with our insistence on the small scale as a mechanism for self-help in such communities, and also in establishing a sense of community in a dysfunctional population (Habitatjam, 2006). These small-scale solutions, representing resource independence, offer a healthy alternative to the forces trying to impose central control.

18. Uncomfortable Realities: Soaring Land Prices, Grand Schemes, and National

Destabilization. We would like to foresee some of the problems that could arise in an imperfect system

(such as the real estate environment), in order to handle the hard realities of the market. The decision on whether to destroy, help to reinforce, or just ignore a favela is up to the government. We are faced with uncomfortable decisions, which affect the lives of many people already in a desperate situation. There is no simple solution, and no universal method can be applied in all cases. The best we can suggest is a cautious approach, without ideological prejudice, that will benefit the entire population as a whole. So often, anonymous but meaningful settlements have been destroyed in the name of “rational” design, which is nothing more than a tool to preserve the status quo.

Squatters require proximity to the city, which is why they move there in the first place. Proximity is essential for them, more so than for the more mobile middle class. Presenting poor people with well-built residences far away from town is not an automatic gift. Transferring the poor to government-built social housing outside the city may plunge them even deeper into destitution, as they then have to spend a greater portion of their earnings for transportation. Our own recommendation of establishing ownership contributes to undo the envisioned solutions, since well-built housing is often re-sold to middle-class residents, while the poor return to squatter settlements (either to their original one, or they build a new one). They prefer to use the profit from selling their new government-sponsored dwelling. In the rental economy, a system of sub-renting substitutes middle-class residents for the very poor.

As soon as a piece of real estate is legally registered, the transferable land title becomes a tradable commodity, and enters the free market (which could be an illegal submarket). Even if a plot is located in the middle of a slum, or in a not-so-desirable social housing project, its price could soar. Opportunities for gain can drive the consolidation of these land parcels into a few hands, not those of the original residents. This has in fact happened in many countries around the world, leading to a corrupt after-market in slum real estate. Ironically, adding infrastructure to a favela raises its value, which can drive its original settlers out. In anticipation of such a process, speculation can run wild on unbuilt land.

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A pervasive system linking corrupt officials with criminal organizations finds ways of profiteering from both slums and social housing. Despite the apparently insoluble socio-legal nature of this problem, we believe that our method actually helps in the long term. Firstly, establishing a tighter ownership of the urban fabric (in both social and emotional terms) reduces the opportunities for exploitation by trading it away. Secondly, much of the exploitation centers on offering services that the government refuses to provide to slum dwellers — it is simply supplying to demand, although at exorbitant prices.

A very different concern comes with our recommendation for engaging Non-Governmental Organizations. While they may be a better choice than an inflexible government bureaucracy, we face a potential problem with grave consequences. The largest NGOs often promote technological “development” in the form of very large projects such as electrification, infrastructure, and building. They see the picture in large-scale terms, and would like to see major construction contracts awarded to foreign companies that have the necessary proven experience in undertaking complex projects of this type. The problem is that many countries cannot afford large-scale interventions.

Despite this reality, a government often gets seduced into entering such a contract, which it ultimately cannot repay. A developing country is counting upon its natural resources to pay the bill for rapid modernization. Nevertheless, economic fluctuations and unexpected events are usually enough to trip the fragile stability of such a deal. The result is that the country gets plunged into debt. By becoming a debtor nation, the nation can only be stabilized by help from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Economic restructuring via Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) imposes harsh economic conditions that worsen the lives of the poorer sectors of society. Not only does the country lose part of its sovereignty, but also from that point on, it is in no position to help its poor in any way.

The lesson to be learned from this — a lesson that many nations have unfortunately failed to learn — is the need to work on the small scale. A vast and costly new project is feasible for the wealthy nations, but very risky for the developing nations. (Large-scale projects are most always based on unsustainable processes that waste vast amounts of energy and resources). Social housing should grow from the bottom up, applying local solutions to small-scale projects. If those solutions work, they can be repeated indefinitely. There are many independent NGOs who can help, and foreign experts who offer knowledge and expertise for free. It is better to rely as much as possible on local financial capital, know-how, and resources. A long-term solution, based on the adaptive evolution of housing patterns and construction, is more sustainable than a technological quick fix.

19. Architects Contribute to Make Existing Projects Alienating.

A number of projects built in Latin America have solved the myriad problems of how to deal with government bureaucracy, having come to terms with practical factors and with the existing political structure. Groups have involved private construction companies with non-governmental organizations and local government to construct and finance social housing. Nevertheless, there is still a distance between techniques for implementation, and how the final product actually feels. As noted before, the scientific

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evidence suggests this is not a matter of “mere personal taste”, but rather there are broad areas of consensus in human assessments, rooted in universal processes of perception and human biology. These areas of consensus can be established through “consensus methodologies”, of the sort that we use routinely in our collaborative design processes.

On this point we are less enthusiastic about what has been achieved so far in Latin America. Despite all the best intentions and an enormous amount of work invested, we see many projects having a qualitative character that is, in a widely shared assessment, impersonal and industrial. Of course, they don’t all have the “deadly” feeling of totalitarian high-rise housing blocks, but the ambience of the built environment ranges from dreary to neutral. In our judgment, the form and layout fail to connect emotionally to the users. It’s interesting to search for the reasons why these solutions were not carried through all the adaptive design steps.

Our explanation is as follows: those projects are directed by architects, who still carry their intellectual baggage of industrial design typologies and relativity of personal tastes, even as they try to help people in a personal way. The architect’s language is influenced by his/her design ideology and is not universal. Very few architects have escaped from the modernist aesthetic that formed a pivotal part of their training (a tradition in architecture schools now going on for several decades). It is extremely difficult to rid oneself of those ingrained architectural images — to break out of the fundamentalist typologies of cubes, horizontal windows, modular blocks, etc., and the logic of abstracted functionalism that often serves as the ideological justification for self-aggrandizing aesthetic posturing (Alexander, 2005; Salingaros, 2006). Especially in Latin America, modernist architectural typologies are adopted as part of the national architectural style, popularly though erroneously linked to progressive political beliefs.

Making some of our criticisms explicit helps readers know what we are talking about. We find modest human-scaled buildings (which is good), but they are arranged on a strict rectangular grid that has no other purpose than to express the “clarity of the conception”. The plan looks perfectly regular from the air (being planned for such unperceivable symmetry), and expresses modularity instead of variation. The mathematically precise arrangement is arbitrary as far as human circulation and perception of space are concerned, hence it does not contribute to urban coherence. On the scale of individual buildings, we see the usual obsessively flat walls without surface articulation; strict rectangularity; flat roofs; doors and windows without frames; slit windows; houses raised on pilotis; useless building setbacks; no curves in places where they would reinforce the tectonic structure but curved walls put in for aesthetic effect; fractured or oversized urban space; etc.

These are the identifying characteristics of the 1920s’ modernist typology. An underlying assumption behind imposing this formal vocabulary on people’s homes is that an ordinary person without training is incapable of shaping form and space, and only an architect (acting as the “expert”) is capable of doing so. It all goes back to the arrogance openly expressed by modernist architects, who showed their contempt for organic urban fabric. Contrary to the habits of much of modernist design and planning, physical and psychological needs have to be understood not in terms of abstracted quantities, but in terms of a capacity for local, adaptive responses to needs and desires. Living individuals experience them as part of particular living communities. The alternative process

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proposed here can be applied generally to arrive at non-standardized and living design solutions — living because they are connected, locally rooted, and inhabited with the spirit as well as the body.

It is very easy to recognize the difference between organic and industrial morphologies, based on their perceived complexity. Here are three criteria that anyone can use: (a) Is the geometry on all scales, from the size of the entire project down to the size of 2 mm details, complex (unique, varied), or simplistic (empty, repetitive)? (b) Are there generally regular transitions from larger to smaller scales, with no abrupt gaps? Or, if there are abrupt transitions, are they terminated with even more complex geometries at the next scale? (c) If the geometry is visually complex, does the form grow out of and adapt to human physical and psychological needs, or is it an arbitrary imposed “high design” complexity? These three criteria distinguish living urban fabric from dead industrial forms (the third criterion is more difficult to apply without some experience).

Paradoxically, the segment of society (i.e., progressive intellectuals and activists promoting social causes) most interested in helping poor people is also that which, for political and ideological reasons, naively assumes that the solutions must conform to the technological “image of modernity”. They cannot think outside the seductive images of the 20th century military/industrial paradigm. They sincerely believe the promises of liberation made by modernist ideologues, but fail to see that such forms and geometries are basically inhuman. By contrast, those privileged individuals who can afford to create a warm, responsive living environment (and know how to implement it) do so mainly for themselves, remaining in general unconcerned with the plight of the poor.

20. People’s Unreal Image of a Desirable Home. There is another point that we have yet to discuss, and which can sabotage the best

intentions of humane social housing. That is the image a potential resident has of “the most wonderful home in the world”. People carry within themselves images of desirability, often the opposite of what they truly require. Advertising works by convincing people to consume what they don’t need; to spend their money on frivolous or noxious things instead of healthy food, medicine, and education. In the same way, our culture propagates artificial images of “beautiful” houses in the minds of the urban poor and even the most isolated rural farmers. When an individual migrates to a town, he/she will work to achieve the housing that corresponds to the image in his/her dreams. It is certainly the case that this image will clash with adaptive housing typologies.

As architects and urbanists, we are constantly competing in a universe of images and ideas that are validated by iconic properties rather than any contribution to adaptive living environments (Alexander, 2005; Salingaros, 2006). Human perception of built space is governed by unstated values and subtleties. It is a frustrating battle, because people are distracted from consideration of what is good or healthy. Wonderfully adaptive vernacular architecture is identified with a heritage from which poor people are trying to escape. They are fleeing their past with its misery. People originally from the countryside shun traditional rural building typologies: they are abandoning symbols of the countryside with all its restrictions and fleeing to the “liberating” city. A new house in

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that style would trigger a deep disappointment. Providing humane housing therefore conflicts with maintaining the “image of modernity”.

A peasant who moves from the countryside into a favela, or someone born there will not wish to see it repaired: he/she desperately wants to move out as soon as possible to a middle-class apartment. The favela doesn’t represent the widely accepted “image of modernity”, but instead carries a social stigma. Escaping poverty, in the mind of the favela’s resident, means escaping from the favela’s geometry. That idea is reinforced by the drastic transformation in geometry that one sees in houses for the middle class. Middle class residences tend to be either dreary modernist apartment complexes, or isolated pseudo-traditional houses with a lawn and fence. Those insipid images of modernity dominate the thinking of poor people, who ingest them from television programs and other marketing outlets.

A new project of social housing that is successful in our terms will inevitably resemble traditional local urban and architectural typologies, simply because those have evolved to be the most adaptive to human needs. That resemblance, however, condemns its image as not progressive. Many residents expect to see their new houses built in the “image of modernity”, as defined by the homes of the rich and famous the world over. Houses and offices in a high-tech modernist style are constantly shown on films and television together with their rich residents. The poor aspire to this dream. On the other hand, wealthy aristocrats living and working in colonial mansions are no longer embraced as models to emulate, because of their association with the pre-modernist past and a conservative political order. That is a pity, because 19th Century building typologies often contain much of a country’s architectural heritage, and offer adaptive solutions that have nothing to do with any social or political class. (People forget that the technocratic style now represents global economic dominance by a powerful elite).

As noted previously, we believe the problem is inescapably cultural in nature. It seems to us that the crux of the issue is valuation — how the community values its options, and then makes decisions accordingly. Or, more properly, it is a question of whether a truly intelligent (i.e. self-correcting and learning) system of collective decision making is in place. So our task is not just to offer choices, but also to offer a framework (or choice of frameworks) in which to make those choices over time.

If residents choose “wealth” as defined in reduced simple terms by monetary markets, then they will logically conclude that the optimal course is to scrape the site flat and put up a single high-rise building with a Big-Box-Mart next door. If they have a longer-term definition of “value” — which includes more subtle but no less vital notions of “quality of life” — then they have a basis for assessing and modifying their built environment in a way that is more complex, more inter-related, and more “organic”. This of course is what a traditional culture is and does, by definition.

That simple notion of “wealth” in reduced monetary market terms cannot distinguish between the subtle processes of life. For this reason, it cannot combine the “top-down” resources like bringing “wet appliances” (concrete boxes containing a bathroom and a kitchen counter with sink), or trucks full of building materials appearing at the edge of the site, with “bottom-up” resources like people working on their own houses, small-scale local economies, or following adaptable generative codes.

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Combining top-down and bottom-up methods is the crux of the problem, which will require a complex integrative approach, rather than a linear application of resources and single-variable solutions. It is a complex, multi-variable problem of self-organization and of organized complexity, and requires a different set of tools from those people are used to working with.

How then do we take seriously people’s aspirations, without necessarily enabling what may be a manipulated desire of theirs, one that encourages the trading away of irreplaceable long-term value for perishable short-term gain? As we have seen, in a modern economic context, traditional cultures are unfortunately very vulnerable to this kind of bad-deal tradeoff. As professional advisers we have a duty to take their aspirations seriously, but also to take seriously their long-term needs, even if they are not really considering them. We should not act in their place — that would be arrogant — but instead have a kind of conversation with them, where we as professionals point out the options before them in a more complete and more connected kind of way.

What is obvious to us isn’t necessarily considered positively by the broader population. Such a thing would make sense, and avoids the dangers, if it came out of a collaborative process that was very much in the hands of the locals. It needs to be their vernacular tradition. Otherwise, there is a real danger of such an effort coming across as presumptuous and condescending. There is a very delicate balance in there between respect for the local culture that is very much a culture of poverty — the everyday urbanism, in a sense — and a recognition of the aspirations even within that culture (and in the individuals) for something they imagine to be better.

Often people need to learn to appreciate what they already have (i.e., the capacities, the wealth, and beauty of their particular cultural adaptations to circumstances). This is all the more urgent since we have a global culture that is mostly dedicated to giving people a hunger for goods they don’t have. For example, we are well aware of the tendencies for low-income communities to be big backers of Big-Box-Marts. If we try to expose all the serious problems created by Big-Box-Marts as a result of the building form and the business model, people may well accuse us of racism: “So why don’t you want us to have what the rest of you already have?”. It’s a very delicate thing when one is working with people in poverty — how does one both give respect where respect is due, and yet recognize where things could be better without being insulting? It requires a process that will engage the creative energy and the self-reliance of the local culture.

21. Is a Changed World Ready to Accept Humane Social Housing? Projects all over the world were built following the organic paradigm, using owner

participation. We observe a cyclic phenomenon: both governments and non-governmental organizations support parts of what we (and others before us) propose, then it falls out of favor and is replaced with inhuman modernist typologies, then it sometimes makes a comeback as elected officials and agency directors change. This temporal fluctuation reflects the model of species competition, where one competing species displaces another (but does not drive it to extinction). When conditions change, that species makes a modest comeback.

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The organic urban paradigm has always been only marginally accepted by the powers-that-be, even though it represents the vast majority of currently built urban fabric. In the ecological analogy, unplanned owner-built housing is actually the dominant species, whereas in the minds of most people (in blatant contradiction of fact), it is assumed to be the minority species. The world’s urban population explosion has occurred in the poorest strata of society, one minor part housed by top-down mechanisms of social housing, while the other major part had to emerge as favelas (irregular settlements). It is this imbalance — between overwhelming forces generating the world’s irregular urban morphology, and ineffective attempts to impose order — that we wish to correct with this Chapter. We depend upon three hopeful strategies: (a) Readers will see that some of the old prejudices against owner-built housing are outdated, and are economically and socially wasteful. (b) People will recognize the roots of this conflict as ideological, and not as exclusively legal. (c) We finally have very powerful tools for efficient design and repair, which were not available in the past.

The New Urbanism movement (spearheaded by one of the authors (AMD)) has helped to awaken the world to the value of traditional urbanism, and to the need of preserving existing portions of living urban fabric. Our approach tries to channel the natural human need for a nourishing and sustainable living environment, which has been the case during several millennia of human existence. Several extremely successful New Urbanist developments have been built in a traditional character, showing that it can be done today. Planning is no longer biased towards the modernist vision. There exists a new awareness, at least in the most economically developed countries. Whereas in the 1960s healthy middle-class neighborhoods were destroyed with impunity (an act euphemistically labeled “urban renewal” (Jacobs, 1961)), such urban aggression is less likely to succeed today. Still, that does not prevent die-hard modernists from trying to publicly discredit the New Urbanism by labeling it as fit only for the very rich. The present Chapter is one of many proofs (if any were needed) that the same techniques apply to house the poor of the world.

People have always had an INSTINCTIVE knowledge of how to build, but all that was casually dismissed by modernist typologies falsely claiming an exclusively rational “scientific” validity. With the recent entry of trained scientists into architecture and urbanism, that misunderstanding has finally been dispelled, and we can separate genuine method from image-driven dogma. Our courageous predecessors who built living urban fabric were all stymied by an architectural establishment convinced of the absolute correctness of the early 20th Century industrial design paradigm. Again and again, projects and ideas were marginalized, and had to be re-invented elsewhere and at another time. We believe that our age is finally ready to accept living urban fabric as part of life itself, and that this idea can assume its proper central place in our consciousness.

22. Conclusion. Twentieth-century practices in constructing social housing may have been well

intentioned, but are ultimately misguided. They do not help to connect the residents to their environment. So much urban fabric all over the world could have been made healthy and sustaining for the same cost, but instead exerts a deadening effect on its residents,

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and ultimately becomes unsustainable. Unfortunately, government planners were determined to impose an ill-conceived social experiment as part of a utopian program of industrialization. We outline here, on the other hand, practical and sensitive solutions that can be applied immediately to any context, with only minor modifications to fit the local conditions.

The authors make these recommendations based upon considerable experience in practical projects. We will be the first to urge making compromises and needed adaptations in implementing our methodology to any particular project, in the spirit of incremental adaptation. It is far better to compromise and get something built, rather than to insist on following every component of our suggested process but have the project rejected. In this way, we can effect a steady transition to a more robust, more life-supporting, and more sustainable kind of housing for the future.

APPENDIX: Generative Code for Social Housing on a Greenfield or Open Brownfield.

The body of this Chapter really outlines a method of methods, which can be used to format an infinite number of different approaches. All the approaches arising from our recommendations share a common adaptivity to human sensibilities. In this essential quality, however, they differ markedly from other methods currently in use. Evidently, a planner has to make up a new method that best suits local conditions and exigencies. For readers who wish to implement our method with the least delay, we outline here a procedure that can produce housing on vacant land. A slightly different approach is needed to work on a site that has existing buildings, and yet another to reconfigure an existing settlement. Please remember that this represents only ONE of an infinite number of related methods satisfying our criteria, and should not be adopted as a universal set of rules.

We assume that a team of planners will work with some or all of potential future residents in all steps of the layout. This is crucial to get a “reading” of the necessary human factors that must be addressed. Actual building is divided into two components: those that are the funding agency’s responsibility, and those that are to be done by the owner/resident. A rough division of labor is for the government to undertake all construction on public space, whereas the owner/resident builds his/her own house; but these responsibilities can overlap either way according to the specific situation. Even if the owners/residents are going to do all the building work on their house, the planning team is prepared to support them and guide them through the process. References below are to individual patterns in A Pattern Language (Alexander et. al., 1977).

It is extremely important to make an initial statement that we have here a different type of approach to social housing, and planning in general. The novelty of this approach is evident in three of our procedures. First, we begin with laying out the ground and street network with active user participation, not as a pre-conceived plan drawn somewhere else. The second unusual element is to allow (in fact, actively encourage) the users to ornament the sidewalk in front of their house, before the house is even built. The third

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unusual element is to build the urban space before any of the houses have been completed. The urban space is going to define the character of the settlement as a whole — its spatial quality and identity on the large scale — more than any other built object. It is going to play a major role in whether the residents feel they own the place emotionally.

We recommend the following steps, where we have emphasized the unusual aspects of our method, while leaving more obvious construction details up to the local team:

1. Walk the land to diagnose its condition, strengths, weaknesses, exceptional opportunities, areas needing repair, etc. Identify any candidates for a sacred space: e.g., high ground, prominent rocks, large trees, etc. These are going to be protected and later incorporated into urban space.

2. In many cases, the settlement will have an existing boundary that determines street connections. Where this is not so (i.e. in the countryside) the neighborhood’s outline must be fixed, as it will have an impact on the overall street pattern (Pattern 15: NEIGHBORHOOD BOUNDARY of Alexander et. al. (1977)).

3. Walk the land to determine the main street and the main cross street from the natural pedestrian flow according to the topography and features. These are going to represent the Roman Cardo and Decumanus, but will be neither necessarily straight, nor orthogonal to each other. Mark them with poles in the ground carrying red flags. Allow room for street plus sidewalks on both sides.

4. Walk the land once more to visualize where the urban spaces ought to lie (decided by the spots that feel the best to stand in; somehow focusing all the region’s positive signals). These are going to be bulges in the main streets near the center, and ought to contain any sacred spaces, if possible. Apply the principle of tangential flow around an urban space (i.e., the street goes alongside an urban space, not through its middle). Urban spaces can be as long as necessary, but not much wider than 20 m (Pattern 61: SMALL PUBLIC SQUARES). Mark the boundaries of the urban spaces with red flags.

5. Decide on the footprint of houses to partially surround and reinforce the urban spaces. Front walls, with no setback, are going to define the urban space boundaries.

6. Now some major layout decisions must be taken. One possible typology is to use building blocks of two houses deep, not necessarily straight, each with dimension roughly 40-60 m wide and 110-150 m long. Building blocks begin at the edge of the urban space and main streets. The direction of each building block is determined by the flow of the land. Their boundaries will define the secondary roads, which are marked with red flags. Secondary streets form T-junctions (Pattern 50: T JUNCTIONS) at the intersections, and do not cross a main street. Secondary streets are narrower than the main streets.

7. At the same time, questions of water drainage are settled, because street direction has to accommodate water flow. Decide where runoff water will drain to outside the settlement so as to avoid flooding. Note if any street has to be graded.

8. Shaping the land begins only now, with the government grading the building ground so that it slopes towards the street on each side for drainage. The streets must be graded where necessary to facilitate wastewater flow as decided beforehand.

9. Participating future residents can lay out their house dimensions, using blue flags.

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Houses have to come up to the sidewalk, and occupy the full frontage. Other than this, there is complete freedom in the house plan. If a courtyard is included, define it by using the house volume to partially surround it (Pattern 115: COURTYARDS WHICH LIVE). Individual variation is essential to guarantee southern exposure; otherwise the courtyard will not be used after it’s built (Pattern 105: SOUTH FACING OUTDOORS). First, define the buildings around the main urban spaces and at the main entrances.

10. Once a sufficient number of house outlines have been marked, complete the lot boundaries by using yellow flags. Each plot should be not less than 20 m deep and 6 m wide. Plots are separated by an alley at the back and by a footpath on each side. Plots are recorded and deeds awarded. The remarkable thing is that this is the first time the settlement is drawn on paper (up until now, we have been working only with flags in the ground).

11. The government puts in any infrastructure it is going to provide: electrical utility poles in the alleys, either a water system or a regular distribution of public water spigots, sewerage pipes or a few common gender-separated latrines, etc.

12. The first act of actual building is putting down a concrete sidewalk along the position of all marked house fronts. The government does this along all deeded plots, but not in parts of the settlement that have not yet been planned. It is convenient to complete one housing block at a time. The sidewalk itself should be very wide, and raised from the street (1.5 m wide sidewalks are useless for forming a neighborhood; see Pattern 55: RAISED WALK).

13. The residents prepare designs using colored bits of scrap material not thicker than 1 cm (pebbles, tile fragments, etc.), and push them into the wet concrete as soon as the sidewalk is poured and smoothed. Anything can be used as long as it doesn’t compromise the structural integrity of the concrete. Expansion joints are incorporated as part of the design. This act personalizes one’s own bit of sidewalk, and establishes the priority of human expression over industrial forms.

14. House building can begin, carried out by the residents themselves, with the front façade going up first at the edge of the sidewalk. In this way, the urban spaces, rather than the houses themselves, are the first spatial elements to be physically constructed (Pattern 106: POSITIVE OUTDOOR SPACE).

15. The entrance (or entrances) to the settlement should be clearly defined by more prominent buildings so they are obvious points of transition (Pattern 53: MAIN GATEWAYS).

16. The government can solidify the urban space by building a large kiosk there — a roofed open room (Pattern 69: PUBLIC OUTDOOR ROOM). Make sure it has steps that are comfortable to sit on (Pattern 125: STAIR SEATS). This element can catalyze the use of the urban space, and enhances sacred elements such as a large tree.

17. Owners complete their individual houses, at their own pace. They have complete freedom in the floor plan within their original markings. If it is appropriate to the culture, build a low sitting wall or ledge integral with the front wall next to the entrance (Pattern 160: BUILDING EDGE and Pattern 242: FRONT DOOR BENCH). This, in turn, might influence the roof overhang.

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18. The description of the building sequence depends on local materials availability, delivery systems, and the most economical alternatives. Decisions such as whether to pour a floor slab at the same time as the concrete sidewalk; if there is plumbing available that needs to go under the slab; whether to fill upright hollow drain pipes with concrete to make a house’s corner columns; what material to use for the load-bearing walls; whether to drop in a prefabricated toilet module; the shape of the roof and how it is to be built, are all best taken by the local consultants.

19. The consultants can advise the owner/builders on how to form the house entrance and windows. A main entrance should have drastically thickened edges to represent the transition from outside to inside (Pattern 225: FRAMES AS THICKENED EDGES). Encourage people to build a transition space, however modest (Pattern 112: ENTRANCE TRANSITION). This emphasizes entry as a process, the opposite of a front door designed as an image of a minimal discontinuity in the flat wall.

20. The same principle also applies to windows: help the owner/builders to create windows with deep reveals and a very thick frame (Pattern 223: DEEP REVEALS).

21. Perhaps the single most important rule to creating rooms in a building is that they must have natural light from two sides (Pattern 159: LIGHT ON TWO SIDES OF EVERY ROOM).

22. As the house fronts near completion, the government offers a monetary prize for the most artistic ornamentation, preferably using traditional motifs chosen entirely by the owners, and supplies paints and materials for that purpose (Pattern 249: ORNAMENT). Ornamentation should be more detailed, and more intense, at eye level and at those places where a user can touch the building.

The above proposal may appear interesting, perhaps extraordinary to conventional planners. Some will doubtlessly criticize it, even though it is supported by the most important document of Latin American planning: the “Laws of the Indies”. (Las Leyes de Indias explicitly direct that a settlement be planned around its central urban space, which has to be established first). We believe our suggestions to be applicable and we ought to try and implement them to any degree possible. It is not necessary for the builders to have access to the full description of each pattern mentioned here; a simple outline and diagram are sufficient. We list the patterns only for reference purposes. The goal of ornamentation is NOT to add something “pretty” so as to distract from the otherwise difficult living conditions. In fact, it serves to connect the residents in a deeper sense to their environment, by giving them intellectual ownership of the physical structure. For this reason, it is absolutely necessary that the residents themselves generate all the ornament and create it with their own hands.

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CHAPTER TWO

TOWARDS A NEW URBAN PHILOSOPHY: THE CASE OF ATHENS

This Chapter presents some ideas on how to fix the disasters in European urban

planning and design — how to repair Europe’s damaged urban fabric. Governments have made tremendous efforts to implement solutions to problems that were obvious to everyone. Unfortunately, these solutions only exacerbate the situation, for reasons I will discuss. Urbanist ideas have been applied since the 1930s that contribute to the deplorable state of urban life in many European cities. Time and again, politicians are seduced into constructing showcase projects that boast an alien, “contemporary” look. I also address the link between bad urban planning and ecological disaster. Finally, I focus on the case of Athens. No European country suffered more from misapplied architecture and urbanism in the postwar period than Greece did.

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1. The New Charter of Athens. I am extremely proud to be a contributor to the New Charter of Athens, 2003 (ECTP,

2003), which is shamefully unknown to most government planners in Europe. They continue to work on the basis of the discredited 1933 Charter of Athens written by Le Corbusier. The European Council of Town Planners decided in 1995 that the effects of applying the 1933 Athens charter were so disastrous for European cities that it had to prepare a new one. A draft was approved in Athens in 1998, and, after more revisions, the new Athens charter of 2003 was presented in Lisbon (not in Athens, because the Greek government then in power did not give its full support — and this at a time when it was funding “fashionable” architectural and urban projects).

The new Athens charter presents an enlightened urbanism for the new millennium: one that accommodates people’s needs and social forces; understands connective networks; promotes the principle of mixed use; respects irreplaceable elements of the past; and tries to integrate the built and natural elements of the environment. This vision considers spatial urban form as complementary to urban connections and movement, and gives priority to understanding their interdependence. It also emphasizes monitoring dynamic changes in a living city so as to catch potential problems before they become entrenched.

The erroneous and untested ideas presented in the 1933 charter were primarily responsible for ruining cities around the world (Salingaros, 2005). The 1933 charter’s main purpose was to erase pedestrian urban life as defined on vibrant city streets in prewar European capitals. Its ideas are an expression of megalomania and disdain for the individual. Everyone knows the seductive images of skyscrapers sitting in vast parks that come from the 1933 charter (along with the strict segregation of uses). I should mention that several generations of urbanists have been taught the principles of the 1933 charter as religious dogma, which is the reason they continue to apply them. At this moment, the Far East is fast destroying itself by following that poleoctonic (urbanicidal) model.

What we are dealing with here is a universal notion of isolation that extends over all scales. Anti-urbanist interventions cut human connections. High-tech architectural fantasies cut people off physically and emotionally from surfaces, and from the built environment in general. We cannot solve the present crisis until we acknowledge that the architecture and urbanism of the twentieth century had as its principal goal the isolation of people, from buildings and from each other. That admission necessitates the even more difficult acknowledgment that the idols of modernism were false gods, and that several generations of planners and politicians were deceived into destroying our cities by applying inappropriate urban principles.

2. Practical suggestions for solutions. We now face an urban Europe partially destroyed, perhaps more so than after the

Second World War, because its population is so much greater today. Then, we were confronted with an expanse of ruins; today we look upon inhuman city cores surrounded by a suburban cancer eating into the countryside. The cities (and countryside) require a radical reorientation if they are to survive in urban terms. I do not advocate radical top-down intrusions, since these work only in select circumstances. The best way to save

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European urbanism is to promote a correct urban philosophy, and to help people save their own cities with the government’s encouragement and backing. This solution is independent of political orientation; I see no obstacle to its being embraced by all political parties. We cannot move forward unless we recognize, and get out from under, the ideology responsible for the destruction of urban landscapes.

What I offer is merely an outline rather than a full analysis. It needs to be filled in with considerably more detail and specific examples, which I leave to others. It is incredible that, for the most part, many European urbanists either do not know or choose to ignore the works of Christopher Alexander (Alexander, 2005; Alexander et. al., 1977) and Léon Krier (Krier, 1998), today’s leading urban theorists. Let me outline some elements of this new approach: the following list can be used as a rough guide for developing more specific urban rules that better adapt to context.

28 elements of a new urban philosophy. 1. Urban components should follow the universal distribution of sizes: many small

buildings, structures, streets, sidewalks, and parks; a medium number of intermediate size; and only a few of large size (Figure 1).

2. Since the smallest urban components commensurate to the size of a human being are the most vulnerable, they must be rigorously protected from encroachment by the larger urban elements (Figure 2).

3. The majority of buildings ought to be mixed-use, combining different functions. This could be implemented by legislation or promoted by tax subsidies.

4. A “neighborhood” is defined by its geography as a compact region where each point is no more than a 15-minute walk from any other point. Major impediments to pedestrians, such as highways, giant parking lots, or impassable barriers, have to be situated on the periphery (or otherwise raised or buried).

5. Zoning regulations should encourage every neighborhood to be mixed-use. I am now talking of an area with buildings of different uses, in rather close proximity (distinct from, and in addition to, mixed use in a single building).

6. City areas that are vacant at night will be populated during that time by marginal elements of the population and by the underclass. This is a natural phenomenon, in which an urban void is filled by available people.

7. Urban life occurs on the surface (sidewalk) level. This domain contains pedestrian activities, and has to be protected from stronger urban elements. It is also where links to other forms of transport must originate.

8. Building fronts must act as connecting interfaces between private and public space, not as barriers. The more permeable the interface, the more intense the street life it can support (Figure 3).

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9. Walls that are not perforated should instead be folded like a curtain, to provide a greater surface area for pedestrian nodes and interactions. Smooth, flat walls are essentially anti-urban (See Figure 3).

10. Built elements provide the boundaries of urban space. The goal is to define a semi-enclosed outdoor space by arranging the buildings, and avoid buildings that stand apart. Vast, open spaces are not urban spaces (See Figure 2).

11. If two distinct, vertically separated levels of pedestrian activity exist, either one will kill off the other, or both will be weakened.

12. When competing urban functions must be separated vertically because of density or danger, the pedestrian function has to occupy the ground level.

13. There is no sense in having strictly pedestrian areas larger than about 50 meters. It is essential, however, to protect primarily pedestrian areas from adjoining traffic by using physical structures such as high sidewalks, low walls, and bollards (Figure 4).

14. A city, like the human body, works through network flow. Connect points within every neighborhood by alternative means of transport: pedestrian, private car, taxi, tram (if existent), and local buses (privately run jitneys or minibuses as well as public buses). Transport has to integrate into a linked set of networks, each working on a distinct scale and speed and requiring different infrastructures (Figure 5).

15. The city consists of interconnected modes of transport, made possible by permeable interfaces that allow one type of traffic to flow across while blocking another type (See Figure 3).

16. Physically incompatible forms of transport, such as highways, the subway, and trains, should be located on a neighborhood’s periphery or be vertically separated from pedestrians, trams, and small local buses — which is necessarily expensive.

17. However, it is infinitely more expensive (because it destroys society and culture) to sacrifice the ground-floor pedestrian urban realm to automobile circulation, parking, and other transport. Cars and trucks, if allowed, will occupy every available surface space. Pedestrians must be PHYSICALLY and PSYCHOLOGICALLY protected while closely interfacing with moving and parked vehicles (See Figure 4).

18. Neighborhoods within the metropolis have to repave local roads so as to REDUCE traffic speed, thus making it possible to extend human life onto the street. Excellent solutions have been given by the Dutch in their woonerven, which are vehicular streets accommodating both pedestrians and cars.

19. Where transportation paths cross, the weaker link must be protected against the stronger. This necessitates defining pedestrian paths across a street, giving a visual cue and also physically slowing down vehicular traffic (See Figure 4).

20. Primarily pedestrian areas (such as sidewalks lined with stores and apartments) have to be fed by transport such as cars and buses; otherwise, they will die off. That requires slowing traffic and making sufficient parking available nearby. The pedestrian urban element must be accessible to all transport networks (Figure 6).

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21. Parking in the dense urban core can only be accommodated by underground garages or vertical stacking, so that it doesn’t encroach onto the ground-floor pedestrian realm. Multilevel parking garages ought to devote their ground floors to commercial use.

22. Neighborhoods need to be connected to each other by multiple transport, including cars, long-range buses, trams, subways, and trains. While the priority here is on non-pedestrian connections because of the larger scale, there must be at least one protected pedestrian connection between any two neighborhoods (Figure 7).

23. The government has to invest in creating crossover points between different transport types to make all these competing transport possible, and to ensure their seamless interconnection (Figure 8).

24. The city naturally divides into the car web surrounding and feeding pedestrian sidewalks and squares. The enclosed areas give priority to pedestrians, while being crisscrossed by cars constrained to specific paths. Cars are intentionally slowed down within a primarily pedestrian area, but are not excluded. Occasional access to all points in pedestrian areas for delivery and emergency vehicles must be guaranteed not by a wide road, but by a road surface that gives priority to pedestrians: vehicles should be allowed ACCESS, not SPEED (Figure 9).

25. The car web contains all those functions that optimize fast automobile traffic, but are essentially hostile to human beings, including wide roads that connect non-pedestrian nodes such as heavy industry, military installations, warehouses, giant parking lots, car dealerships, garages and gasoline stations, among others.

26. The present trend to locate office buildings as isolated nodes in the car web must be reversed by tax incentives, so that offices can relocate within the pedestrian urban element. Isolating nodes that contain many people makes sense only if their activities conflict with residential and other uses, for they create a dangerous dependence on cars.

27. Using tax subsidies, light industry must be encouraged to relocate within mixed-use regions. Only heavy industry should be isolated from the city.

28. Skyscrapers (buildings higher than 10 stories) are not cost-effective, and they burden a city’s infrastructure and transportation resources in a wide region around themselves. A city can only afford to support a very small number of skyscrapers for vanity purposes (Figure 10).

The above propositions come from the work of Christopher Alexander (Alexander, 2005; Alexander et. al., 1977) and Léon Krier (Krier, 1998), as well as from my own studies (Salingaros, 2005). The three of us, drawing on work by others, are putting together a picture of the living city that can be used as a model for all future urban development. I have tried to orient the present Chapter toward the problems of the European city; yet most of these urban principles are, in fact, universally applicable. Joel Crawford (Crawford, 2000), Andrés Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, and Jeff Speck (Duany, Plater-Zyberk & Speck, 2000) and David Sucher (Sucher, 2003) from the United States, Josep Oliva from Barcelona (Oliva i Casas, 2001), and Jan Gehl (Gehl, 1996) from Denmark have all published books of sensible advice on how to reconnect the urban fabric.

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3. The ecological dimension. A radically new urban philosophy can emerge from these suggestions. It is but a small

step in the direction I am proposing to bring the natural environment into the picture. This way of looking at the built environment gives priority to human beings and small-scale structures. It represents a drastic reversal of twentieth-century urbanism, which emphasized the large scale and ignored the individual. An urbanism that destroys the small scale and treats human beings as expendable objects will never respect the natural world. On the contrary, it is an expression of human arrogance regarding nature. A new urbanism, which respects our sensibilities in the built environment, would also appreciate our natural environment (Roaf, 2005).

Once we begin to salvage the old, and now mostly lost, regions of our cities, we can also begin to appreciate the living elements within those cities. A tree grows naturally next to a low, crooked wall, and within a courtyard. A wide, uneven sidewalk has space to accommodate trees. An archeologically open space provides a habitat for some urban (if only avian) wildlife. This is more a philosophy of nature and of the earth than a conscious approach to urbanism. In the event, and as I said, an urbanism that is modest and respects human sensibilities will also respect the natural environment; it goes hand in hand with a modest architecture of human proportions and textures. The alien look of polished metal, glass façades, and smooth, windowless walls breeds an intolerance for living things precisely because it represents the opposite properties.

I am looking to the future, when we will use scientific knowledge about complex systems and their interactions to better plan our cities. Critics of such ideas dismiss them as nostalgic, belonging to the past. That is not accurate. What I propose has a striking commonality with some aspects of traditional urbanism, which accommodates human beings and not machines or abstract geometric forms. Those critics are stuck in an obscurantist mindset of inherited urbanist dogma. To them, any revolutionary proposal for progress threatens their own false promise of a “progress” possible only through modernist principles. Those principles are the same failed ideas of the 1920s, recycled over and again. Each time, cities and nations are promised that they will work now, and that their previous applications were sabotaged by factors “beyond” their planners’ control.

Like a pathogen, modernist urbanism is easily recognizable once one knows what signs to look for. Some of its principal characteristics are: monolithic buildings and vast open spaces; geometrical alignment to arbitrary rectangular axes; elimination of the intermediate and smaller scales; insistence on industrial materials; insistence on the “purity” of form and surfaces. This goes hand in hand with an intolerance of whatever helps to reinforce the urban fabric, such as pedestrian spaces, semi-enclosed urban spaces, permeable interfaces, folded urban boundaries, remnants of the past, modestly-sized structures, street furniture, and anything that “clutters” an empty minimalist geometry.

Most telling is a static mindset that deceives anyone considering modernist solutions that look neatly regular on paper. A dynamic city constantly evolves because of urban forces, much like any ecosystem. Only those persons who are supremely arrogant assume

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that they can impose static geometric solutions, and that people will follow them exactly without eventual change. The same foolish assumption is made about materials: architects erect smooth, flat walls and complain that they stain and weather badly. They have never understood how materials age, nor how urban structure evolves in time.

Modernist prescriptions destroy cities by reversing hierarchies of connectivity. They remove organized structure and differentiation from the human scale. At the same time, they eliminate connective paths within human reach. The end result displays an artificial, mechanical movement as services have to be forced into over-concentrated downtown office nodes. Human beings need both structures and paths on the human scale — an obvious biological fact that has escaped modernist planners. Further, as in an ecological system, when certain levels of life are missing, they are replaced by organisms from nearby strata. This has led to many downtown areas being occupied, after hours, by homeless persons and/or petty criminals. It is not their fault; there are just no socially healthier elements willing to occupy that hostile niche in the urban ecosystem.

4. A new generation of urbanists. A separate but subtler danger comes from postmodernist architects who appreciate

correct urbanist principles, but misuse them to promote their own alien buildings. These people (some of whom occupy positions of great power and influence in the architectural community) are promoting good cities with faulty pieces. What they would have us build is similar to some northern European “new towns”, where all the right urban connections are present, yet the towns are still dead because the architecture is alienating on a human scale. We have here high-tech parasites of the living urban fabric.

To add insult to injury, some postmodernist urbanists have appropriated the terms “ecological” and “sustainable” to denote energy-saving buildings that are entirely alien to humanity. Up close, such buildings resemble a space station — as far removed from nature as can be imagined. Nevertheless, municipalities and national governments have been duped into spending money to build high-tech monstrosities out of extremely expensive materials simply because their architects add some solar panels to them or use elementary concepts of recycling and insulation. It is a mark of public gullibility that buildings have ignored such fundamental ecological concerns for so long that they can now be promoted as “innovative” (Roaf, 2005). Just like their modernist predecessors, these architects deceive us with flashy and seductive images of industrial materials.

Some of these prominent architects are now destroying China’s centuries-old sustainable urban fabric, replacing it with an unsustainable nightmare of concrete, glass, and steel. This will guarantee gasoline dependence and urban congestion for generations. One would think that these planners are employed by transnational oil companies to stake out profits for at least a century, but no. They have been invited, and are paid, by the Chinese government to “renew” its cities. The damage they are doing, however, far surpasses that of the combined Mongolian invasions. I mention this only as a warning to other governments, which has been jealously looking to bring these same fashionable people to wreak havoc in their own countries.

The new generation of urbanists encompasses several diverse groups: those who wrote

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the New Charter of Athens 2003; the neo-traditionalists inspired by Prince Charles (Charles, Prince of Wales, 1989); those who cling stubbornly to the old modernist dogmas; and promoters of the network city (which includes me and others who propose radical solutions based on technology). Some of these persons understand how a city works, while others only think they do. Some have a good understanding of urban processes on a particular scale, but grasp neither other scales nor their need to integrate into one another. Others are impostors, plain and simple. Urbanism is an easy field in which to make wild new proposals without having to prove their effectiveness.

5. Sociologists keep the old dogmas alive. One is hard-pressed to explain postwar urban destruction on such a massive scale,

implemented by governments using all their power and resources. This anti-urban movement (disguised as progress) continues unabated, while the few voices proposing a humane urbanism are ignored by the entrenched circles of power. Sustainable urban models exist today, promoted by architects and thinkers who truly understand urban and social forces. We have adaptive solutions in our hands. It only remains to convince industry and governments to adopt them.

That is not happening, and the reasons are principally ideological. Even though new urbanist visions are cheaper and more effective in the long run, the madness now being pursued is supported by a fundamental belief system. Certain authors on the political left continue to cling to the dogma that technology can “liberate” human beings from their own humanity; and that the gifts of the future are denied to those who connect to nature. The solutions offered are the same unworkable utopian dreams that in the past led to totalitarian interventions. Supposedly, the State knows all, whereas individuals are ready to betray progress so as to satisfy a sentimental desire for comfort.

A successful deception has been maintained for several decades: claiming that urbanism lies primarily in the domain of sociology. Not only are the geometrical foundations of urbanism ignored; but people don’t even consider the possibility that urban structure has its own mathematical basis. When politicians seek advice on urban issues, they invariably turn to sociologist-urbanists, who offer the solutions we see implemented today. Why are sociologists complicit in this destructive act? I believe the answer lies in the original fascination the political left had with technology as a way of shaping society. Both Soviet Marxists and National Socialists were mesmerized by visions of skyscrapers, freeways, and centrally-planned industrial cities; i.e., all the paraphernalia of modernist urbanism.

Today’s politicians, regardless of their political orientation, continue to be beholden to the same “experts”, who promise them quick technological fixes. The old images of shiny industrial objects have not lost their seductive qualities. International conferences planning the future of cities, on globalization, economic advantages, etc. still invite people to present the latest untried utopian conjectures, in a direct parallel to the old modernist dogma from the 1933 Athens Charter. Its propagandists have now cleverly repackaged the original message using new buzzwords such as “hypergrowth strategy”, “mega-projects”, “diversity”, “networks”, and “sustainability”. These words are unfortunately misused to promote an anti-urban agenda of skyscrapers and a dreary

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industrialized landscape. Truly innovative urbanists have been pushed to the sidelines by the false accusation

that urban solutions based on real human needs are backward looking, and are furthermore politically conservative. New urbanists are condemned, along with their human-scaled proposals, as being outdated and reactionary. New urbanists who happen to be on the left, on the other hand, are dismissed as “anarchists”. This brilliant propaganda ploy has preserved the power and income of a handful of wily individuals. As a result, no politician dares to risk his or her public image as a “progressive” by sponsoring any traditional-looking urban project (that is, resembling pre-1933 prototypes). Modernist ideologues have even succeeded so far in their efforts to marginalize the 2003 Athens Charter.

Christopher Alexander demonstrates beyond any shadow of a doubt that urbanism consists of social processes that depend critically upon a geometric rubric (Alexander, 2005; Alexander et. al., 1977). Many social patterns simply cannot take place without the appropriate geometrical framework. This result (experimentally verified) invalidates claims by eminent sociologists that 20th Century society has freed itself from the constraints of the built environment. I can understand why sociologist-urbanists continue to ignore the geometry of the urban fabric, as a policy necessary to preserve their dogmas. According to Alexander, geometry is the core of all urbanism, and a geometrical understanding does not allow anyone to get away with specious proposals.

6. Urbanism and ideology in Athens. The remainder of this Chapter focuses on the case of Athens, as an example of a

European city that destroyed its earlier, more human urban fabric. I argue that this was the result of misapplied urbanist principles. It is only by studying why things went wrong that we can ever hope to reverse the urban damage. The case of Athens is applicable, with only minor modifications, to many other European cities.

At the time of Greek independence in the early 19th Century, Athens was a fairly small town, ideal for the new government to begin erecting imposing new buildings and planning its urban structure for several decades. For the most part, Athens by the 1920s still followed the model of vibrant local neighborhoods partially connected by an electric subway (and soon to be even better connected by electric trams running on rails). Unfortunately, this balance between connective links and the built environment was shattered by both the tremendous influx of immigrants from the Asia Minor disaster in 1922 (an aftermath of World War I) and the onset of global economic depression at the end of the Twenties. These factors led to the overcrowding of Athens and to its future definition as the overflowing container of most of Greece’s population.

Athens’s urban collapse, coupled with the complementary collapse of villages that emptied their population into the capital city, generated social and political forces that are still unresolved today, and gave rise to a strongly ideological — and utopian — “solutions” divorced from reality. For example, the former Prime Minister, Konstantinos Karamanlis (uncle and namesake of the current prime minister), eagerly dismantled the tramlines, as he obviously identified them with Athens’s past and wanted to bring the

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country into the future. The world’s top postwar urbanists recommended this step in order to speed up automobile traffic. But it was a mistake, as is now apparent by the reintroduction of the old tram (albeit in a technologically updated form) to restore this vital transport link to Athens.

While the developmental model chosen to deal with the devastation wrought by the German occupation and Greece’s Civil War was wrongheaded in the extreme (based as it was, to a great extent, on construction alone), it was an obvious choice at a time of severely limited options. To be fair to the elder Karamanlis, he chose the fast — if illusionary — track to rapid economic growth in the 1950s. At the same time, however, this choice inevitably contributed to urban and social degradation. Now we recognize it as an economic choice that proved disastrous in the long run.

Worse of all was the ideology of “progress”, which could only be realized by rending the previous urban fabric. Certain essential elements of Greek urban culture — old Athenian homes with courtyards, small sidestreets, small pedestrian squares, kiosks, mixed-use four-story buildings — were condemned as useless and fit only for replacement. What was chosen to replace them were models imported from industrialized Europe and the United States (the latest in urban and architectural “progress”) that consisted of isolated villas, monofunctional high-rises connected by expressways, buildings closed to the pedestrian street, and even the total elimination of the pedestrian street. Along with these changes came an architecture that deliberately disdained life, and wore an alien face of polished metal, plate glass, sheer stone, or brutal concrete.

Greeks accepted this new “look” as symbolic of architectural (and, by implication, social and economic) progress. The political left saw this utopian urbanism as a rejection of the “old”, traditional urbanism, which symbolized the right’s power base, and as a necessary part of the socialist revolution that would guarantee the country a bright new future. The right, on the other hand, was equally willing to co-opt immigrant settlements that housed left-wing voters by razing existing structures and replacing them with “modern” workers’ housing. As for the right’s upper-class constituencies, they wanted new highways through the city so that they could enjoy their cars. Wealthy residents eagerly embraced an isolating urbanism within their neighborhoods, since it offered protection from “crime” (real or imaginary) and a chance to avoid mixing with those less well-off. In the end, a succession of governments, advised by respected urbanists, implemented policies that destroyed the functioning urban environment in place at the end of the Forties.

While more recent history easily confirms that the left has been responsible for its own share of urban disasters, the blame for the depredations of the Fifties, Sixties, and Seventies in Greece lies squarely with the political right. During a 40-year-long postwar monopoly on political and social power, right-wing governments consistently chose to apply anti-urbanist policies. Smaller cities survived better, simply because of neglect, as Athens concentrated most of the country’s resources. Many provincial centers weathered postwar urban blight much better than Athens. It would be heartening to point to local civic pride as having tempered the worst of the urban assault, but this is not the case. Whenever they had the funds, cities beyond Athens immediately did the same damage to themselves, destroying what was most valuable in their urban environments.

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7. What went wrong in Greek urbanism. In the mad rush to “equality” with the US and northern Europe, automobile ownership

in Greece has skyrocketed. In rural areas, this is understandable, since cars have provided an efficient connectivity, perhaps for the first time in history. In cities, however, severe problems have resulted since no thought was given to how all these cars were going to get around; as a result, roads are now choked. In parts of Athens, even the smallest side street is crowded day and night with traffic. There was also no thought given to parking all these vehicles, either for the night, or once they reached their destination.

The present state of commuting in Athens is the result of a monumental misunderstanding. Cities are transportation networks connecting pedestrian nodes (Salingaros, 2005). The quality and density of connections within and around those nodes, and connections among spatially separated nodes, are what enable a city to function. How efficiently a city works depends on the degree to which distinct transportation (including pedestrian) networks are integrated. Government planners, however, have visualized cities as buildings fitted into an abstract geometry, allowing them to cover every available space. Their idea of connectivity is to build a highway out to a group of isolated villas or high-rises. This philosophy naively supposes that the urban fabric will magically reproduce and expand by itself.

The old courtyard house fronted by a calm side street provided Athenian urban life with a ground-floor pedestrian realm connecting internal, private space to external, public space that was available to children and the elderly. This was replaced by the four-storey apartment building, with shops on the ground floor. The street, consequently, carried a high traffic load, thus leaving only a narrow sidewalk for the urban realm. The lost pedestrian space was shifted to a number of small neighborhood parks, which represented a workable but primarily CAR-FREE solution, since the main transport in this pattern functioned through buses, trams, and subway. The increased pressure from cars promptly made it unworkable, although we were left with semi-functional pieces throughout Greece. What killed this model were greed and a total lack of government oversight.

The typical phenomenon of the high-rise (four- to six-storey) apartment house was both forced upon and eagerly adopted by the Greek public, for two reasons. First, it was propelled by the huge population (that is, internal-migration) pressure, which led to vertical stacking. Second, it was itself a driving force behind the construction boom that heated up the Greek economy in the Fifties and Sixties. For many citizens, the speculative building of apartment buildings became a gold mine, an employment opportunity, a route to a higher standard of living, or even all of the above. Politicians were unwilling, therefore, to criticize the postwar urban model in any way. The available ground space was far more useful (and valuable) for erecting more buildings.

It may indeed be possible to return to the four-storey, mixed-use apartment model. Today, however, one has to provide for underground (as well as limited surface) parking. Sidewalks have to be much wider, and urban space better defined, to enclose protected portions of the pedestrian realm (Alexander, 2005). A lot more green space needs to be made available. Finally, balconies have to be at least two meters deep (roughly); otherwise they don’t work as raised living spaces (Alexander et. al., 1977). These

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improvements would not, in themselves, solve the circulation and parking problems in the city, however. Although the destruction of any vestige of urban green space amounts to criminal negligence, the consequences of ignoring the parking and circulation problems are just as serious over the long term.

I cannot overemphasize that urban society forms in the pedestrian realm, which itself has to be nurtured at street level. But the postwar residential urban model evolved into new and unsustainable typologies. The height of a typical apartment building in Athens has now increased beyond four stories, which surpasses the critical limit of density capable of sustaining urban life. Above four stories, there is no visual or spoken exchange with the street level (Alexander et. al., 1977). Children and the elderly are virtually imprisoned in their apartments, thus disconnecting society.

Even more serious is the elimination of mixed use. The parking garage has replaced the traditional commercial ground floor. A cheap solution — easing parking problems at home by putting cars under apartments (but not underground) — has dealt the final blow. Today, monofunctional apartment high-rises sit on stilts, with the ground floor entirely taken over by parking (following the 1922 Citrohan model of the hysterically antisocial Le Corbusier). This disconnects inhabitants from urban life, reconnecting them only through their cars. It is the same disconnection seen in North American suburbs, with their well-documented social alienation (Duany, Plater-Zyberk & Speck, 2000). We have vertical isolation in Greece, as opposed to the horizontal isolation of the United States. Since there is no longer any connection with the ground, sidewalks have begun to shrink, and apartment buildings stand apart from each other, thus failing to define any urban space.

The pedestrian realm has been totally sacrificed to the needs of the automobile. A facile parking solution is to accommodate vehicles underneath the new, freestanding apartment buildings, but this is an illusion. Those cars start off in the morning to jam the streets and fight for nonexistent parking spaces at their destination. Some residents pretend that they need their cars only to take their families out of the concrete hell of Athens, so that they can live a “normal” life in the countryside for a few days. It never occurs to them that it is possible to live a more connected life in the city itself — with the correct geometry.

8. Conclusion. Modernist urbanism — based on the power to impose technology over nature — is

essentially destructive of what already exists. It is also profoundly arrogant in its assertion of a brutal power over something it doesn’t understand, and which it disdains. Europe’s urban, social, and environmental devastation during the last two generations is due to interlinked causes. Today, progress requires a major change in worldview. The pairing of technological progress with an urbanism of alien forms is a great lie, but one fanatically believed in by many “modern” Europeans. Technology can indeed help in the reconstruction, when applied intelligently. Science is essential to help urban residents live like human beings once again and regenerate their environment.

Misguided urbanists applying wrong ideas have done (and continue to do) so much

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damage that it is impossible to know where to begin a critique. Let me touch only on the topic of automobiles. Cars will not go away; everyone wants to own at least one and many persons own two. Automobiles are a tremendously useful, if very expensive, mode of transport, but they must be accommodated without destroying the pedestrian urban fabric. Since this has already been destroyed in most places, it must be rewoven. A living city connects its cars to people in a non-threatening way: automobiles should not take over a city. Planners have to understand how to interweave the car web to the primarily pedestrian urban fabric. Then they can work out how to optimize that web without destroying the rest of the city. These principles are very simple to understand.

Europeans used to have a well-balanced respect for the environment (at least in the mythical days of yesteryear, when people lacked the technological power to destroy it). But this respect was replaced by a new philosophy of intolerance. Old Europe stood in the way of grand urban and architectural projects deemed necessary to “progress”. We sacrificed much to this progress, and it is now choking us. City building consists of a series of compromises and accommodations. This, however, is not the same as sacrificing elements of our heritage and environment to antiquated visions of the future. I would like to see the countries in Europe repair their urban environment so that their citizens and their citizens’ children can enjoy a better quality of life. I wish to save those pieces of uniquely European urban fabric from the senseless destruction to which it has been condemned.

The solution to Europe’s urban problems is not merely contained in the points outlined above. It also lies in the adoption of a new philosophy of humankind’s relationship to nature and the environment. It is contained in the serious, scientific study of what specific rules actually generate living cities. It lies in recognizing that the ideological urbanism of the postwar years has been discredited in practice. It lies in rejecting as toxic the high-tech “look” of contemporary architecture (tolerable only in minute quantities). Once those philosophically linked steps are taken — accepting the full humility of human beings vis-à-vis their environment, their fellow beings, their historical past, and their urban heritage — then everything else will follow.

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CHAPTER THREE

COMPACT CITY REPLACES SPRAWL

The compact, geometrically integrated city can and should replace suburban sprawl as the dominant development pattern in the future. This approach to urban planning and design is well established among proponents of the New Urbanist and Smart Growth movements. However, the more radical scenario I propose in this Chapter is that the compact city should also replace the high-rise, ultra-high-density mega-city model. I will present arguments for the compact city from both directions, criticizing both conventional suburbia and the hyper-intensity of the urban core. A radical intervention is required on the part of concerned urbanists. We need to rethink the positioning of individual buildings to form a coherent urban fabric, as well as the role of thoroughfares, parking, and urban spaces. New zoning codes based on the rural-to-urban Transect and the form of the built environment are now available to assure predictable densities and mixed use for the compact city.

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1. Introduction. Sprawl is a remorseless phenomenon. We see it covering more and more of the earth’s

surface, whether it is in the form of favelas invading the countryside in the developing world, or as monotonous subdivisions in the United States. Nevertheless, the city of tomorrow (actually, in many parts of the world, the city of today) has a low-rise, compact human scale. If the government does not forbid it (or cannot control it), favelas eventually condense to define compact urban regions, but the same organizing process cannot occur in subdivisions because of anti-urban zoning. A favela can become living urban fabric, whereas its high-priced US analog remains dead. The difference is in the connectivity.

Suburban sprawl has become a self-generating, self-fulfilling “machine” that produces an enormous amount of mechanical movement, but is not conducive to natural human actions and needs. Sprawl persists because vehicles define a now-familiar self-perpetuating entity: the auto-dependent landscape. Cars enable sprawl, and sprawl needs cars. This suburban “machine” now circumvents its human creators and feeds in directly to the globalized economy. Yet it wastes untold amounts of time and resources, while trapping those without cars in their homes.

High-rise apartment and office towers are equally unsustainable. The serious threat of high energy costs makes both ultra-high-density environments based on skyscrapers, and low-density suburban sprawl no longer feasible. Ultra-high-density urbanism creates more problems than it solves, in the form of energy reliance that draws on the resources of an enormous surrounding region and shortsightedly depends on an uninterrupted supply of cheap oil. Our only alternative is the smaller-scale, compact city, ideally surrounded by and close to agricultural lands for local food supply. We should produce viable settlements at optimal densities for the human scale, just as body tissue has a compact structure at an optimal density. This can be achieved through thoughtful planning and the appropriate codes.

Urbanism once meant dense city living for humans, but anti-urban forces have (literally) driven people out to the opposite condition: low-density suburban sprawl. The correct solution is not formless sprawl, however, but an intermediate density low-rise compact city that is geometrically integrated. The huge commercial success of postwar suburban growth (a low-density phenomenon) took place because it harnessed genuine and powerful socio-economic forces. It also generated and fed some of those forces by means of clever media manipulation and advertising. Those same forces can be channeled to build a better environment for human beings — the compact, geometrically integrated city — so as to make an urban environment adaptable as much as possible. Suggestions for achieving that on a theoretical level are offered elsewhere (Salingaros, 2005).

There is nothing wrong with either high density or low density per se, as long as it is well integrated with other densities and is in the right place (not too much of the same thing). People in the past several decades seem to have bought into the false notion of geometrical uniformity, which goes back to the now discredited 1933 Charter of Athens (Chapter 1 of this book). That document introduced notions that turned out to be catastrophic for cities, such as separating functions into single-use zoning, the false

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“economy of scale”, and also seductive but toxic images of ultra-high-density skyscrapers, vast open plazas, and uniform housing developments. It gave planners the idea of disintegrating the city into non-interacting components, or at best, ones that interact with each other only at tremendous cost and inconvenience; the opposite of a geometrically integrated city.

2. Andrés Duany and the Transect. Even the best theoretical urbanism is close to useless without changes in our zoning

codes, however. The existing codes, more than anything, determine the pattern of urbanism. The planner-architect Andrés Duany and his partner Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk are at the forefront of efforts to reform these codes. They coded and designed the highly successful New Urbanist community of Seaside, Florida in the mid 1980s. The momentum from Seaside propelled traditional town planning again into the mainstream of planning options (Duany & Plater-Zyberk, 2005; Duany et. al., 2000). Duany and his colleagues have built numerous New Urbanist projects around the world, and in each case they work closely with the local government to adopt codes based on urban form instead of the separation of uses. Without a form-based code, one cannot predictably plan a human-scale community. Duany will not work for a community that wants to rebuild itself, but which stubbornly retains its postwar anti-urban codes. He has found out from experience that it leads to time-consuming and irresolvable conflicts.

Using a very pragmatic approach to urban form, Duany classifies different zones according to a Transect (i.e. a cross-section of a continuum) of the built environment, according to intensity and density of urban components. He then proposes that communities ensure their desired urban character by adopting written codes that prescribe it. In Transect planning there are six zones, but the three zones T3 (Sub-Urban), T4 (Urban General), and T5 (Urban Center) (Duany & Plater-Zyberk, 2005) contain the areas that we would identify with a compact, walkable, mixed-use village or city neighborhood. Unfortunately, the single-use zoning of the past sixty years has made such compact patterns illegal. (Note that, as explained below, Sub-Urban is not the same thing as suburban).

I propose that a compact T3/T4/T5 city or town begin to substitute for suburban sprawl everywhere around the world. The compact city is sustainable, whereas both sprawl and the high-rise mega-city are not. The Transect codes are ready for immediate use, and should therefore be adopted by government agencies. The “low-density city” we now see erasing farmland is not a city: it feeds off and depletes a vast region that it keeps at a distance, so the functioning city is much larger, has a higher net density than first appears, and is ultimately unsustainable.

3. The Three Urban Transect Zones of the Compact City. Transect Zone T3 allows single houses on large lots, with a looser road network than in

the higher zones. A Transect-based code limits the density to maintain a relatively rural character. Still, there would be walkable street connectivity to the denser Zones, so that residents are not isolated and forced to use cars for all their daily needs. Thus, T3 is part

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of the compact city, not estranged from it. (Country houses, on the other hand, would be part of T2, the Rural Zone, which is by definition outside the city). The T3 Zone may be the same density as the dreary suburban tract houses we see in sprawl — technically referred to as Conventional Suburban Development (CSD) — but other key design elements in the new codes ensure much more housing diversity, walkability, and connectivity.

Transect Zone T4 is the denser Urban General Zone, with houses closer to each other and to the sidewalk. More mixed use is permitted, with corner stores and restaurants within walking distance of most houses. As soon as the density permits, therefore, the mixing of functions is actively encouraged by the Transect-based codes.

Finally, Transect Zone T5 is the Urban Center, thoroughly mixing commercial uses with housing. This is analogous to the neighborhood center or small-town Main Street in early twentieth-century America, as well as the traditional European village. Transect-based zoning supports the compact city from both of the critical standpoints identified earlier, for it also prevents the erection of high-rise buildings and vast parking lots, whose expanse and density destroy the desired human-scaled character of T5. (The height limit in the Duany Plater-Zyberk Transect-based Smart Code is three storeys for T3, four for T4, and six for T5). Other important details, such as sharp curb radii and narrow streets, help to calm traffic.

The urban geometry in these Transect Zones is entirely different from that of sprawl (Conventional Suburban Development): roads and buildings correspond more to the compact small town found at the turn of the last century. Suburban sprawl, on the other hand, is neither a low-density CITY nor true country living; in pretending to be both, it accomplishes neither. The correct Transect codes ensure that the complex urban morphology necessary to support the city for people will not disintegrate into disconnected sprawl.

One crucial point of the Transect is that the three zones T3, T4, and T5 connect to and adjoin each other. Each one is kept by its own code from changing wildly, yet each one needs the other two next to it. Suburbia without an urban center requires constant driving, while a downtown without a healthy mix of uses is dead after business hours (Chapter 1). The codes prevent the repetition of one single zone over a wide area, thus preventing the monoculture of sprawl.

Theoretical work (Salingaros, 2005) based upon earlier work by Christopher Alexander (Alexander et. al., 1977) supports Duany and Plater-Zyberk’s practical prescriptions with fundamental arguments about urban form and structure. New Urbanist solutions also draw upon the neo-traditional notions of Léon Krier (Krier, 1998). The same approaches will, of course, also work for the Urban Core (T6), as well as for Natural and Rural Zones (T1 and T2), and the appropriate Transect-based codes apply to those densities as well. Nevertheless, here my topic is the compact city, a human-scaled city to replace both sprawl and the high-rise mega-city. The compact city, therefore, involves only the medium-density zones of T3, T4, and T5.

4. Sprawl is driven by the Car.

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Sprawl exists only because it is an outgrowth of car activities. In turn, this automobile dependence generates urban geometries that accommodate cars first and pedestrians second. These are the wrong priorities for a healthy life, especially for those who cannot drive: the young, the old, and the poor. The sustainable compact city must be designed for the pedestrian first.

People have been encouraged by the automobile industry and by government agencies promoting the automobile industry to indulge in an impossible and destructive fantasy of inappropriate urban types. In practical terms, sprawl comes about from misunderstanding urban morphology. The needs of the car automatically generate an urban morphology appropriate to the car. Sprawl relies totally on the automobile, and thus follows the dendritic (treelike) geometry of roads. A dendritic geometry is good for the automobile, but is inappropriate for human beings. Sprawl occurs when buildings are erected with no regard or understanding of which connective geometries encourage walking. Suburban sprawl grows uncontrollably, generated by anti-urban zoning codes that achieve the opposite geometry to what human beings need.

Complex urban fabric means condensation, connectivity, and mixing; the opposite of homogeneity (Salingaros, 2005). And yet, most postwar planning has deliberately spread a homogeneous, amorphous structure over the earth, replacing healthy urban fabric in existing compact cities. Monoculture displaces and stretches its vital connections to complementary nodes, making the functioning city (a much larger entity that encompasses the entire commuting distance) tremendously wasteful of both time and energy.

With the wrong codes in place almost everywhere today, roads in fact determine the geometry of urban settlements. Let’s examine what happens when the government builds a road to connect two towns. A road in the countryside attracts new buildings along its length, thus linking each building with that particular road and with nothing else. But human beings do not link to a road: they link to work, school, church, medical facilities, etc. Clustering is supposed to occur among linked human activities, and not strictly between houses and a road. It’s the wrong linking, and it destroys the meaning of a city.

The solution is obvious to some of us. Zoning codes should prevent the dendritic growth of buildings along roads, and instead promote an urban geometry that concentrates human connections inward to focus on local urban nodes. Transect-based zoning has the correct zoning codes that do this, replacing anti-urban zoning codes that allow the unrestrained growth of the auto-dependent landscape.

5. Laws, Regulations, and the Democratic Ideal. I have proposed Transect-based zoning to regulate the development of urban areas of

different density. It may appear to a reader that this represents a rather strict set of regulations. The notion of regulations runs counter to our utopian conception of civic freedom, and may cause strong protests if not revolution. In the case of Transect zoning, however, I am simply advocating a REPLACEMENT of very rigid zoning codes that already exist, governing the geometry of buildings and roads. Most people are woefully unaware of how tightly the built environment is now controlled by existing codes on

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planner’s books. They have been sold the false image of “suburban freedom”. In fact, Transect-based zoning provides MORE choices for development than does current single-use zoning.

Another misconception about Transect zoning and the New Urbanism is that it places severe restrictions on cars. It merely changes the geometry of how they move and where they park. True, in the compact city, the movement of cars is calmed, and parking is no longer dominant and obvious in front of buildings. But cars are not banned, and parking is adequate.

Still, for a variety of reasons, including energy costs and population growth, car use must be curtailed over time. Unfortunately, the immensely powerful car industry has successfully coupled the idea of personal “freedom” with a car purchase, and it has been almost impossible to convince people to reduce car use. They don’t see that giving unlimited “freedom” to the car has to be paid for by the destruction of a city, and of their own human environment. One’s car today represents something almost inviolate — a right of ownership and object of fetish all at the same time. It is going to be very difficult to educate people on this point.

6. The Auto-Dependent Landscape Self-Generates. The auto-dependent landscape consists of the road surface, parking, and all areas

devoted to the care and feeding of vehicles, such as gasoline stations, garages, muffler shops, tire stores, hubcap stores, car dealerships, parts stores, car washes, automotive junkyards, etc. Shopping areas and restaurants take the form of drive-ins or malls set back in a sea of parking. In this way sprawl is a self-generating system with mechanisms for spreading and enlarging itself. In the auto-dependent landscape — occupying more than half the urban surface in many regions — vehicles no longer serve simply as a means of human transportation, but as ends in themselves.

Since the auto-dependent landscape feeds on and generates much of the world’s economy, it is not feasible to simply eliminate it. Many countries’ industries and economic base depend on producing cars and parts, or petroleum and petroleum products. Global wars are fought over the petroleum supply. At the same time, the auto-dependent landscape is changing the earth and human civilization, so it has to be contained. What is good for General Motors is no longer good for America, to turn around an old American slogan. Car-related activities within a city are still essential for our economies, but they must be kept on the proper geographic scale. The great planning fallacy in our times is trying to mix up (instead of carefully interface) the auto-dependent landscape with the city for people: all that happens is that the former takes over the latter.

Most important, vehicular speed must be calmed. The highways of the auto-dependent landscape are designed to maximize a smooth and fast flow of traffic, without any consideration of human beings outside a car. Those same principles of speed maximization at the expense of pedestrian physical and psychological well-being have been automatically applied to all roads inside the urban fabric, making it anti-urban in the process. My book “Principles of Urban Structure” (Salingaros, 2005) offers rules that reestablish the city for people by giving pedestrians priority over cars. Those rules rely on

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earlier work by Christopher Alexander, published as “A Pattern Language” more than twenty-five years ago (Alexander et. al., 1977).

Despite numerous, well-documented presentations of energy/oil depletion issues, people remain blissfully unconcerned about their car-dependent lifestyle. They trust the transnational oil companies to continue providing them with affordable gasoline until the end of time. Gasoline will certainly be available — at market price, whatever that may be in the future. I do not add my voice to the doomsayers predicting the end of petroleum, but unsustainable urban and suburban morphologies will simply become too expensive to survive. The compact, small-scale city is sustainable, whereas ultra-high-density skyscrapers and suburban sprawl are not.

7. Sprawl is also driven by Commercial Forces. The dream of owning an isolated country villa surrounded by forest draws people out

to suburbia, and cheap land draws developers there. At the same time, lower rents and taxes draw business there, following residential growth. But because the form of suburbia is already established by single-use zoning, businesses must locate away from residential areas, and they must locate where there is enough drive-by traffic to sustain them. Since developers and builders have made fortunes out of selling this defective geometry, they simply keep building what they have done for decades. Government perpetuates sprawl by building roads and infrastructure in an anti-urban pattern.

Because business in sprawl depends on attracting the drive-by customer, then, it must announce to all drivers that there is ample free parking everywhere. Thus we have the shopping mall surrounded by a vast parking lot; the office tower in the middle of farmland surrounded by its parking lot; the university campus in the middle of nowhere surrounded by its parking lots, and so on. Urban morphology is determined in most places by highways and parking lots. Again, the priorities are exactly backwards. Thoroughfares and parking lots should conform to a compact urban structure, not the other way around.

The geometry of commercial nodes is generally oriented outwards toward high-speed arterials to attract drivers. Current zoning makes sure that it cannot be oriented toward residential neighborhoods. That must change with new Transect-based zoning. When a community adopts such a zoning code, there will be assigned Transect zones as described above and structured so that stores, schools, churches, and parks are within walking distance of homes. Density increases as T-Zones get higher, but never to the extent of the high-rise mega-city that depends precariously upon a vast energy grid. In a Transect-based code, mixed use is allowed in all T-Zones, and the design of streets favors the pedestrian. The first priority is to get rid of the parking lot in front of a store, narrow the streets, and provide a wide sidewalk (Sucher, 2003). On-street parking is fine; as is parking behind, below, and above the store (Sucher, 2003). Parking garages must have liner stores with windows, so that the pedestrian does not walk past blank walls or rows of cars. People are more likely to walk if there are pleasant things to look at on the way.

Sustainable compact cities in place all around the world are now being destroyed by the introduction of anti-urban components. Not only are skyscrapers proliferating as

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symbols of modernity, but so are more modest typologies that profit one person while slowly degrading the entire city. In Latin America and Europe, for example, a new corner store typology copied from the United States erases the sidewalk and gives it over to parking. If this goes on (along with adopting other similar typologies from the auto-dependent landscape), that will unbalance societies that have depended on a human-scale urban morphology for so long.

Transect-based zoning codes limit the number of storeys in the compact city to three in zone T3, four in zone T4, and six in zone T5. This places a ceiling that protects the urban fabric from the negative consequences of high-rise construction. These problems include: the office tower (which generates traffic congestion for the entire region during rush hour); the residential tower (which generates strongly negative social forces as discussed in (Alexander et. al., 1977; Salingaros, 2005)); and the giant parking lot that comes as part of either of these (and which erases the human environment precisely where it ought to be intensified). High-rise buildings don’t belong in a compact city. Genuine high-density, high-rise city centers do exist, as coded for in Transect Zone T6, the Urban Core. Examples include the downtown Loop in Chicago, Manhattan, Hong Kong, and Sydney. But I do not foresee a future for new T6 Cores, so I have confined the compact city to a T5 maximum density and six-story height limit.

It is a great pity to see cities in the developing world self-destruct as they try to imitate the images of dysfunctional western cities (to them, symbols of power and progress). Cities in southeast Asia and China that had been working fairly well up until recently, such as Bangkok and Shanghai, have in one bold step ruined their traditional connective geometry. Their mistakes include building mega-towers, then widening streets and building a maze of expressways to serve the new ultra-high-density nodes. For their entire future, those cities are condemned to be choked by traffic.

8. Low Speed Encourages Urban Life. The compact city is a LOW-SPEED city. This feature has to be guaranteed by narrow

streets and a special low-speed geometry. Planning has for several decades concentrated upon increasing vehicular traffic flow. This has diminished the livability of cities and urban regions. To rebuild a living environment for people, we need to reverse almost all the traffic-boosting planning measures implemented since the end of World War II — that is, rewrite the traffic codes. Roads inside the compact city should not be built to accommodate fast vehicular traffic. Cars should go slowly inside this region. The physical road surface and width will force them to. Transect-based planning calls for thoroughfare design to respond to the context of the T-Zone, not the other way around.

The key is to permit internal access everywhere for large vehicles such as fire trucks, delivery trucks, and ambulances, but in the immediate vicinity of a house cluster around an urban space, all the roads should be woonerven, the Dutch model of very low-speed roads shared with pedestrians (Gehl, 1996). Here we may use narrow roads with occasionally semi-finished surfaces. We have forever confused ACCESS with SPEED. Today, fire departments refuse to cooperate with urbanists, insisting on an over-wide paved thoroughfare everywhere. The reason is that fire chiefs want to be able to make a U-turn in one of their giant fire engines anywhere along any road.

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The compact city mixes shared civic spaces with concentrated arrangements of structures. It defines a highly-organized complex system, in which each component supports and is connected to the whole. A city for people consists of buildings of local character and specific function that contribute to the immersive context of their Transect Zone. This is the opposite of modern “generic” building types, which are strictly utilitarian and connect only to the parking lot. Fixated on fast speed, governments or developers spend much of their money on paving wide roads and vast parking lots, neglecting the design of urban space. When building a low-speed parking ribbon (described in the following Section), parking costs should be the last priority, thus permitting gravel, and brick/grass surfaces. Such surfaces slow cars down.

Urban space is supported by the geometry of surrounding buildings (Salingaros, 2005). Buildings should attach themselves to those spaces, and not to the road. A compact city is defined by internal cohesion achieved via a centripetal (center-supporting) arrangement, versus a centrifugal (directing away from the center) arrangement. Buildings are connected via a network of paths into clusters. A number of buildings should define a cluster perceived by a pedestrian as accessible (a low-speed setting). By contrast, buildings in suburban sprawl are outward-looking and connect to nodes in the far distance, but not to each other (a high-speed setting). There are rarely any local connections in a monofunctional region.

Sidewalks and all pedestrian paths must be protected from unnecessary changes of level, and any other discontinuities (Gehl, 1996). Cars on the other hand, don’t get tired, so their path can easily go around people and pedestrian nodes. Again, that slows them down (anathema to today’s traffic engineers!). Pedestrian paths should be laid out to connect urban nodes, and to reinforce a connected complex of urban spaces (Salingaros, 2005). A parking ribbon can be designed to snake around buildings and pedestrian urban spaces — not the other way around.

9. Car-Pedestrian Interactions and the Parking Ribbon. The compact city is a city for people, but it still accommodates cars and trucks.

However, surface parking lots interrupt the urban structure and sense of an outdoor “room”; they are dangerous and exhausting for pedestrians, and visually destroy any pleasant walking. They also create runoff from impervious surface, encouraging flooding.

Instead of taking over a vast open area, parking should occur in a ribbon of intentionally constrained road: I am proposing a radically different parking geometry, to be generated by new zoning codes. A parking “lot,” then, is just another road, not an open space. These long and narrow parking ribbons will branch into each other, assuming a networked form just like urban streets. A maximum dimension of about two car lengths will be stipulated for the width of any parking ribbon, accommodating only one side of head-in or diagonal parking. Parking ribbons don’t need to be straight, but can be made to fill up otherwise useless narrow spaces.

Furthermore, pedestrians should be given priority when crossing an existing large parking lot. This means building a raised footpath, sometimes covered by a canopy, and also giving it a distinct color coding for visual separation. Giant, uniform parking lots are

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hostile to human beings and essentially anti-urban. They can be reformatted into parking ribbons by building other structures inside them. Inserting sections of water-permeable surface into giant parking lots will also solve the serious problem of flooding from storm run-off. Such infill solutions can be written into a new code.

On-street curbside parking (either parallel, or diagonal) should be encouraged in the public frontage, but banned from the private frontage, between the sidewalk and building face (Sucher, 2003). On-street parking actually helps pedestrians feel safer on the sidewalk by providing a buffer between them and moving traffic. Sidewalks are not used if there exists a psychological fear from nearby cars and trucks; vehicular traffic parallel to pedestrian flow can be tolerated only if it flows at a certain distance from people. Adjusting the maximum speed of a road (not by speed limit signs, but by its narrowness and road surface) to tolerable limits also achieves this symbiosis. For slightly faster urban traffic, an excellent thoroughfare type to accommodate both car traffic and safe sidewalks is the boulevard, traditionally designed with low-speed “slip roads” and parking on the sides.

Parking ribbons already exist in traditional urbanism: as curbside parking on slow-moving roads; and on the sides of a fast-moving boulevard. Most parking garages are indeed wound-up parking ribbons. What I’m suggesting is that ALL parking should conform to the ribbon geometry. A parking lot should never again be confused with an urban space, and cars should never be allowed to take over an urban space.

Another solution is to have orthogonal flow for pedestrians and vehicles (working simultaneously with protected parallel flow). Their intersection must be non-threatening. The two distinct flows cross frequently at places that are protected for pedestrians. In this way, the two flows do not compete except at crossing points. Introducing a row of bollards saves many situations where pedestrians are physically threatened by vehicles. An amalgamation of pedestrian paths defines a usable urban space. This must be strongly protected from vehicular traffic. Any paved space that children might use for play must be absolutely safe from traffic. I discuss all these points at length (Chapter 1; Salingaros, 2005).

10. Beyond the Transect with Christopher Alexander. Where do the Transect-based codes come from? They are a result of thinking how to

create an environment conducive to human life, obtained by comparing present-day with older successful environments the world over. They ultimately depend on traditional solutions, such as those collected in Christopher Alexander’s “A Pattern Language” (Alexander et. al., 1977). The Transect’s value lies in structuring a proven form of compact, traditional urbanism in a way that can be used within the existing planning bureaucracy. As Andrés Duany has so often expressed, he wants to use the system to introduce radical changes without waiting to change the system itself. He calls the Transect-based Smart Code a “plug” into the existing power grid used to working in terms of zoning.

There is another approach. Alexander’s new book “The Nature of Order” (Alexander, 2005) is the most important analysis of architecture and urbanism published in the last

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several decades. Alexander advocates a complete replacement of current planning philosophy, because the existing manner of doing things is so fundamentally antihuman. That may be difficult to implement immediately, but the future of cities does depend upon ultimately applying Alexander’s understanding on how urban form is generated, and how it evolves by adapting to human needs. My own work (Chapter 1; Salingaros, 2005) has been profoundly influenced by Alexander’s.

Alexander describes his adaptive design process, giving examples to show urbanists how to tailor it to their own particular project (Alexander, 2005: Book 3). I will not attempt to summarize his extensive results here, but only wish to point out a key finding. Living urban regions have a certain rough percentage of areas devoted to pedestrians-green-buildings-cars as 17%-29%-27%-27%. Contrast this to a majority of today’s urban regions, which typically have the percentage distribution as 2%-28%-23%-47%. Alexander describes in great detail the succession of geometrical steps that can be taken to convert one type of urban region into another. His approach is to do this one step at a time, and it is eminently practical.

The result is what all of us — Alexander, Duany, Krier, Plater-Zyberk, and myself — want: a human-oriented urban environment. At the same time, Alexander presents a theory of urban evolution, which could be steered either towards a living city, or towards an anti-urban landscape for cars. The point is to recognize the fundamental mechanisms and forces that push towards either goal, and to channel them to what we want. Most important, we should recognize what we really want, since many people (including prominent urbanists) really do want to sacrifice urban life to the auto-dependent landscape, even though they may not openly admit it.

Alexander’s understanding of urban processes probes far deeper than the Transect. Duany and Plater-Zyberk have learned from Alexander, but want to affect immediate improvements. The simplest expedient is a change in zoning codes, such as the Transect-based Smart Code. Today’s urban environment is so fragmented, degraded, and antihuman that such code reform is urgently needed. Once healthy urban fabric begins to grow again, then people can see the advantages of a human-scale built environment. They could apply Alexander’s ideas to generate vital urban regions once again. Anyone who dismisses the New Urbanism as superficial, or as simply a “style”, needs to read Alexander to really understand urban form.

And yet, I must point out a fundamental difference. Alexander is convinced that genuine urban unfolding — the process of sequential adaptation that generates living environments — is not possible within current planning practice. He fears that the system is not only misaligned, but is also too rigid to accommodate living processes. The new Transect-based codes, significant as they are in improving an abysmal situation, are not flexible enough, according to Alexander, precisely because they work within the present planning system. Since changing a vast and established bureaucracy is next to impossible, Alexander proposes going around the system. These points raise serious tactical questions.

Defining urban character as inherent in the Transect has begun to reestablish an urban structure that can engender a new urban citizen. The Transect, however, is just a beginning: in addition to these sectional prescriptive codes, urbanists must extend their

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logic to multiple scales and work through a knowledge of urban adaptive processes (Alexander, 2005; Salingaros, 2005).

11. Some Contradictions. There are several contradictions I feel I need to discuss. First, the limitations of

working with a system of permits and construction that is deeply flawed, threaten to neutralize any code-based way of building cities. Alexander (2005) emphasizes that living cities can only come about from an adaptive PROCESS, i.e., building and adjusting urban form step-by-step. This is not easily reconcilable with the present mainstream professional culture. It is, however, the way that traditional building and self-built settlements arose for millennia.

Alexander’s fear is that any system that builds cities without a truly adaptive process will never achieve the intense degree of life seen and felt in cities of the past. That is not the aim of the present code-based system, which instead uses the existing bureaucracy to limit such an evolution of urban form. The gradual evolution of cities, akin to the evolution of individual organisms and ecosystems, is now illegal. What is allowed is a large-scale intervention, regardless if it is catastrophic or nearly so (planners cling to the myth of an “economy of scale”) (Salingaros, 2005).

The second contradiction is that a majority of people go along with anti-urban sprawl and high-rise construction without complaining. It is hardly possible to discuss issues of urban form with a contemporary society that has become desensitized through its addiction to technology. Growing up in suburbia with the false notion of unlimited freedom has distanced people from truly human environments. People who enjoy eating junk food in their parked car; who love the ear-damaging loudness of commercial movie theaters and rock concerts; who own a “Home Entertainment System” (a monster television/stereo with subwoofer) and another subwoofer in their car, are not going to value the pleasures of a traditional environment — it only reminds them of a pre-technological past.

In the present atmosphere, I see Transect-based codes as the best entry-point for bringing a human environment back to our cities. I have discussed these issues with commercial developers, who insist that they are not setting urban typologies: they are only providing what the market wants, working within the existing codes. Clearly, our society has to learn to appreciate good urbanism before Alexander’s work and my own can begin to be applied to cities. The Transect will certainly help to move society in that direction.

Alexander would prefer for codes to be optional and voluntary: accepted by ordinary people on the basis of understanding and sensitivity, and not imposed by law. Duany, on the other hand, is suspicious of media-induced fear and manipulative marketing; those forces push people to reject connectivity and to want to live in monocultures.

The third contradiction is that human-scaled cities must be market-driven and implemented by legislation, but people don’t seem to be ready to do what is required. Any hope for a positive change must come from an educated society that demands good urbanism instead of its “junk food equivalent”. Enough popular support has to build up to

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pressure elected officials to make the necessary changes in urban codes. Those who need it the most — the young, the old, and the poor — are either not educated about city form, or have no influence. New Urbanist ideas have been embraced by upper-income groups simply because of their higher level of education. That is not because of any particular attraction between the compact city and any particular socioeconomic class.

Ultimately, the most disadvantaged classes of society can least afford the expense of sprawl, yet only those who are better educated see the reality of a human-scale urban environment.

The fourth contradiction is the institutionalization of sprawl. In addition to planning codes, sprawl has been adopted as an unshakeable standard by insurance companies and financial institutions. They are reluctant to finance or insure the compact city, but will automatically help to build sprawl because all their offices and agents have been doing this for decades. That mindset is permanently fixed to the extent that even when natural disasters wipe out vast areas of sprawl, the bureaucracy does not permit them being rebuilt as compact city. An opportunity to finally get rid of anti-urban patterns and to reconfigure our cities is thus missed. All the discussion about wasting time in commuting, and wasting one’s salary on gasoline seems to be for nothing, if it will not influence rebuilding when an opportunity presents itself. This may be interpreted alternately as the bureaucracy doing the “safe” thing; or as criminal willfulness.

12. Conclusion. This Chapter put forward a radical idea shared by many urbanists today: that the ultra-

high-density city is outdated. There are essential differences with other authors, however. Unlike some of my colleagues who abandon any urban principles out of frustration, I condemn suburban sprawl and high-rise buildings as equally unworkable. Supporting Andrés Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, I proposed a “new” ordered urban form: the compact city. This new urban typology looks remarkably like the old geometry of small-town and village living, so it is really a return to traditional urbanism. Where it is radical is that it requires a complete rewriting of the zoning codes. That is essential, since theoretical urbanism is ineffective if the present anti-urban codes remain unchanged.

This Chapter also contained an implicit condemnation of planners and designers who refuse to distinguish between good and bad urbanism, or to offer any workable solutions. That is the equivalent of doctors refusing to diagnose and cure patients, deciding to give an equal chance to the microbes. Prominent designers talk about the urban condition, labeling the disconnection of our cities (and civilization) as a new, exciting phenomenon: a natural evolution (instead of extinction) of the city. They also accept, without question, the massive destruction of traditional urbanism taking place in China and the developing world as “inevitable progress”. Urbanists have a responsibility to intervene; they cannot be neutral observers. From now on, the world can only rely on pragmatic urbanists who are willing to tackle practical issues to create compact cities for humans.

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CHAPTER FOUR

GROWING SUSTAINABLE SUBURBS: AN INCREMENTAL STRATEGY FOR

RECONSTRUCTING SPRAWL.

By Lucien Steil, Nikos A. Salingaros & Michael W. Mehaffy (President, Vice-President, and Secretary, respectively, of Katarxis

Urban Workshops).

A new way of understanding the growth of urban form leads to practical suggestions

for reconstructing a more sustainable suburbia. Combining theoretical results with pragmatic experience — and combining “top-down” controls with “bottom-up” processes — we offer guidelines for implementing small-scale changes that eventually lead to large-scale improvements. The goal is a re-integration of the urban realm, resulting in a more humane and sustainable environment. Importantly, this can be achieved by a minimum of new investment applied all at once. Changes need to be implemented over time, and subsequent interventions will respond to the success of the preceding ones.

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1. Introduction. Although attention tends to focus exclusively on the particular modern phenomenon

called “sprawl”, we must recognize that suburban expansion has existed since the beginning of cities. A city, whether planned or haphazard in its initial form, tends to grow organically as its population increases. Legal measures that check the possible overgrowth of the central urban fabric, diverting new growth to the urban periphery, go back to the beginnings of civilization. In its earliest form, a relatively sympathetic exurbia maintained strong organic and structural ties to the city. Outer growth often completed some of the insufficient functional and spatial requirements of the tightly delimited historic city areas enclosed by natural or man-made barriers. Military and religious uses, for example, needed large open and flexible development spaces. Markets and business activities often found the ancient cities too restrictive for their activities.

These various activities and uses attracted a variety of other heterogeneous activities serving and supporting monasteries, cattle markets and fairs, military barracks, stores, travelers’ inns and hostels, and later manufacturing and industrial installations. Houses, shops, restaurants, bars, and various services contributed to create suburbs with qualities similar to those one could find in the central cities. These benign suburbs conceived and built as mini-cities most often respected the scale, connectivity, hierarchies, and proportions found in the best urban centers, and they had a symbiotic complementarity with the cities they gathered around or grew out from. They respected pedestrian-scale principles, with the result that they were walkable urban extensions characterized by relatively flexible, organic and vital urban structure. In today’s terms, they were sustainable urban morphologies.

The first historic suburban explosion happened with the arrival of urban train and transit facilities, which allowed commuters to escape daily from the crowded city, and, for the first time, to combine living in a relatively rural landscape with working in the city. Of course, this solution was totally unsustainable. The rural character did not stay that way for very long, as successive waves of commuters leapfrogged one another to move further out to more peaceful environments. Beginning in Europe in the late 19th century and the USA in the early 20th, the periphery of large cities began to rapidly expand further and further away from the earlier city edges following the expansion of the railways patterns. This autocatalytic dynamic started to produce an enormous new suburban zone, with endless rows of houses and discontinuous urban sprawl along transit lines.

The second historic suburban expansion came about when the automobile became the engine of urban planning, helping to make mobility the principal and compulsive activity of individuals. It was not so much the formidable invention of the automobile itself — and its corollary, the historically exceptional age of fossil fuels — but rather the acceptance of automobile transportation as the essential and virtually exclusive connector of the various human needs. These now became dispersed by monofunctional zoning over larger territories and distances: so separated that an individual could no longer walk reasonably through this system. Automotive traffic became the indispensable tool needed to organize the connective system for the whole spectrum of human needs, from the daily domestic needs of the res privata, to the more refined and equally indispensable needs of

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the res publica. Along with both of these historic waves — and in some cases accelerating them — has

grown a body of political theory justifying and even celebrating the new development patterns. The Garden Cities movement, for example, sought to rationalize the new separated city, which meant the segregation of its functions within a low-density suburban hierarchy. The Radiant City of Le Corbusier glorified the new car-dominated suburbs, and made them a fashionable cornerstone of modernist planning and design. His vision was the basis for Norman Bel Geddes’ 1938 World’s Fair diorama exhibit, “Futurama”, which in turn inspired a massive wave of freeway-based suburban expansion two decades later. Le Corbusier’s wildly exuberant vision of a suburban utopia seems somewhat chilling in today’s era of ecological and resource challenges.

Since that time, suburbia has variously been associated with ideas of liberation, freedom of choice, autonomy, connection to nature, space and health, priority of family over society, individual emancipation over collective regimentation, private integrity over public alienation, and many more worthy goals. On closer examination, however, the connection is more imagined than real. In any case, the appeal of modern suburbia is undeniably strong. Hardly anyone has been really obliged to move to the suburbs, but clearly many millions have elected to do so, for these and perhaps other reasons (notably economic factors; particularly land prices).

2. Tradeoffs in the Contemporary Suburb. There are many negative tradeoffs that come with the evident benefits of suburban

structure as it exists today. The future, it seems, will bring many more if we continue to misunderstand basic forces behind urban growth. Debate has raged about whether the contemporary suburb is a sustainable urban typology; whether it can survive coming ecological and resource challenges — particularly the increasing diseconomies of “peak oil” — or whether its weaknesses will become so compounded over time that it will have to be drastically modified. In any case, there is little disagreement about the following negative tradeoffs that already exist in today’s ubiquitous suburb:

(i) Severely restricted transport alternatives. To the extent that travel is exclusively dependent upon the automobile, those who can’t drive (children, the elderly, the infirm, the poor) are at a severe disadvantage in travel to daily activities and access to needs. Those who can drive (e.g. mothers) must often act as taxi drivers for others, and sacrifice significant time and expense of their own. Walking is severely restricted, negating its demonstrated benefits to physical, mental, and social health.

(ii) Congestion-promoting geometry. The hub-hierarchical system of roads (see

Appendix I; Salingaros, 2005) characteristic of modern suburbs, and the compounded dispersal of destinations (more roads to get to more things requiring them to be ever further apart) creates increasing traffic congestion over time. This wastes resources and decreases work productivity, air quality, and respiratory health, while increasing fuel consumption, expense, noise, stress, and dependence on non-renewable and imported

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resources.

(iii) Higher infrastructure burden. The inefficient land-use pattern (segregated uses; hub-hierarchical roads; low density) tends to place an undue burden on the maintenance of a huge infrastructure. The tax collected per dwelling necessary to maintain aging suburban infrastructure increases over time. Increasing property taxes undermine efforts at densification, because they drive people ever further out beyond the suburban limits, which must then grow a new and vast infrastructure.

(iv) Weak public realm. Public spaces have become dispersed, poorly-populated, and

expensive to manage. This is due to a failure to understand the human forces defining public space, and is responsible for a general decline of the public realm (Salingaros, 2005). This, in turn, has been shown to result in a decline of civic interactions. There is a growing trend toward private commercial spaces and gated enclaves, thus essentially privatizing the public realm and limiting its role as social and economic catalyst.

(v) Decline of an authentic sense of place. Contemporary suburbs pose a perhaps even more intractable set of challenges for reform, because they lack the identity of place. Phony names like “Stafford Pointe” and a fountain on the feeder road don’t connect residents with their non-neighborhood. These suburbs have scarce civic activities; they lack adaptable historic architecture; they have a highly dispersed, poorly connected urban pattern. All these are absent as a result of the peculiar and pathological suburban geometry of post-war suburban growth. There is no civitas in suburbia.

(vi) Degradation of livability over time. These negative urban trends increasingly destroy the very qualities that suburbanites sought in the first instance. Cars take over the roads and curbs just as much as in the city core, and individual garages eventually become filled with consumer junk, forcing cars to park outside. The only alternative is to leapfrog to a new suburban site before it, too, destroys these qualities with its own self-induced pattern of growth. This leapfrogging mechanism is the essence of a self-destroying, unsustainable pattern.

Most of the myths upon which suburbia has built its seductiveness have been exposed as false. Beyond its initial, impressive economies of scale, its increasing structural and functional failures are plainly evident. Legislation — and the special interests that it favors — helps to keep the current unsustainable model “locked in”, preventing any competing model from implementation. There exists a built-in momentum of doing things a certain way, following unsustainable post-war typologies from the car-dependent landscape. The market already often rewards higher-density, walkable “neo-traditional” urban developments — but only where they are not made illegal by current suburban zoning! Meanwhile, residents find themselves having to pay increasingly for the growing social, cultural, economic, energy, and ecological costs of the modern suburb.

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The lesson seems clear enough: the problems of older developments (including those of inner cities) are not always best served by fleeing to yet another outer undeveloped location. At some point, the optimal solution must necessarily be to turn back, reform the older development, and make it serve human needs more efficiently. This step rests on the recognition of value for a central place, and is fundamentally a process of regeneration rather than an unsustainable throwaway despoliation of our farmland. We propose reconstruction as the evident theory behind a successful new wave of inner-city and suburban redevelopment across the globe.

We do not treat here the social issues of the older suburbs, which is a major topic warranting a separate discussion. Rather, we present short-term pragmatics and policies for the reconstruction of the physical geography, and these will inevitably limit and shape the social life of the region. How this is addressed depends on who implements our proposals. The present social crisis is a most acute manifestation of everything unsustainable in suburbia: its self-consumption; its waste of time; its waste of energy; its erosion of social solidarity, self-organizational capacities, local creativity, imagination, and identity; its disorganization of human communities; its segregating mechanics and exclusions through its mono-functional and mono-social zonings, etc. Thus, we ultimately support social regeneration and healing by the measures we suggest. These will drastically improve social self-esteem, enable collaborative synergies and local solidarities, help in rebuilding communities, as well as diversifying and enriching the social transect.

3. A Plan For Action. In the current urban and political environment, one must ask what is the most effective

and realistic strategy (or series of strategies) capable of addressing the evident shortcomings of existing suburbs. These include their inefficient, hub-hierarchical, dispersed structure, the resulting over-dependence on the automobile, and other problems. To be effective and realistic means that such a strategy must not rely upon utopian conditions, astronomical sums of scarce taxpayer money, or radical opportunities to reengineer or rebuild. It means, very simply, a largely incremental approach driven by typical urban forces: redirecting the same forces that created today’s unsustainable sprawl.

There is no need to restructure billions of acres of suburbia comprehensively and simultaneously — even if such a massive undertaking were economically feasible. The steps and priorities that we discuss here can be implemented on some vital parts within any suburban system. Developing such crucial focal points using our suggestions, we can then incrementally fix the networking and add missing links to the urban fabric. This will generate healing processes and self-regenerating dynamics that can eventually spread to a wider region of the urban fabric. For example, we can intervene just on the scale of a piazza design or new public building; or a building with mixed use in the right location.

We insist that there are possible short-term economic techniques to start the process of suburban reconstruction without either political revolutions, or high capital investments — in short, with an incremental, transformative approach. We believe the project of suburban reconstruction will be closely related to the emergence of a New Economy,

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with better accounting for sustainable features, and with more justified and more equitable resulting wealth. Its immediate social and economic benefits will include sustainable local job creation, and support for new professional skills. These will be developed and offered as an opportunity for rewarding careers in real estate and building trades.

Our proposals depend on a radical new conception of what a city is, and how it functions. We base our working assumptions on the latest scientific understandings in complexity theory, which invalidate most post-war planning models. Rules accepted as valid by well-meaning government planners and academics generated sprawl and degraded city centers to the point of almost total social collapse. A living city has to be both inhomogeneous and coherent: composed of distinct types of regions and functions, all working closely together. This implies simultaneous competition and cooperation between urban forces and functions. For example, commercial nodes are needed in the center of a suburban bedroom community to tie it together coherently. Such nodes need to connect both on the short (pedestrian) scale, and on the long (vehicular) scale, leading to a conflict that must be resolved by a very careful compromise in design. Once a commercial center becomes successful, legislation has to guarantee that it will not displace adjoining residences because of rising property values. As in a successful ecosystem, competing forces must be kept in a dynamic (not static) equilibrium.

This requires a different way of thinking about the relationship between conscious choices (like political decisions) and emergent trends (like aggregate economic processes), a combination of which has produced the modern suburb. These two extremes can be thought of as “top-down” and “bottom-up” processes. It is not a question of elevating one or the other, but of how they can be integrated, and managed more shrewdly. (In fact, the relationship between the two is very complex: for example, “top-down” political choices also have cumulative “bottom-up” effects, and cumulative economic trends also have at their heart “top-down” individual choices.) The radical conception of “the kind of problem a city is” (to use Jane Jacobs’ apt phrase) must be joined by a radical new conception of how to manage such a complex structure more successfully for maximum human benefit.

The very notion of “control” must also undergo a change — one that has been said to be “less like carpentry, and more like gardening”. Acting as responsible citizens and professionals, we must learn to manage and support bottom-up phenomena, such as market forces, without allowing them to descend to the lowest common denominator. We should also recognize the vital role as well as the limitations of top-down actions, beyond which they can be exceedingly dangerous. There are promising new strategies that combine the two aspects, particularly in the form of new kinds of “generative” urban codes.

We are proposing here in particular new “bottom-up” incremental changes and an associated method of working. This mode of planning and reconstruction encapsulates the central and radical method that we are proposing — an incremental approach based on a bottom-up methodology. It must be combined with top-down tools where appropriate and feasible, and the two approaches (bottom-up and top-down) can be coordinated into a larger whole through generative codes.

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4. US Urbanism and Beyond. Despite the unsustainability of the suburban model and the “tyranny of the private

realm” it constitutes, the challenge cannot be dealt with without acknowledging the original purposes and ideals of suburban life. We are ready to evaluate positively some of the operational typologies and patterns developed in suburban city building. Everyone can agree that the most extreme form of scale-less and amorphous urban sprawl has contributed very little value to urban culture. Yet, the history of suburban settlements cannot be reduced to its most caricatured examples. We take into account relatively successful examples like the early Garden Cities, Siedlungen in Germany, and early suburban developments in the USA. A strong case can be made, we believe, that such examples offer much more functional alternatives for a living urban tradition.

Although we utilize thinking and typologies from sprawl in the USA, our method is meant to apply universally. The degeneration of urban fabric in the USA is a special case, but it is neither isolated, nor exclusive. The same forces that produced it are crossing geographical and social distance into other cultures, and are influencing local neighborhoods the world over. This process is driven not only by the passion to copy all things American (even by the USA’s political and ideological enemies), but also simply by the globalization of economic models that produced what they did in the USA. If nothing is done to actively counteract those trends, then the American variety of suburban sprawl is destined to become a global phenomenon.

Europe has its own particular suburbia, exhibiting far more national and local differentiations. For example, its urban landscape includes the terrifying violence-ridden French “Cités”, the Eastern European prefabricated satellite towns, the residential middle-class low-density areas in many European countries, the English New Towns, decaying residential zones adjoining now dead industrial zones, etc. Despite the superficially distinct morphological character of these urban typologies, the European bureaucracy is ready to unleash its destructive potential throughout European territory, using the USA sprawl model as a template.

The reason behind this potentially disastrous mistake is that the sprawl typology is plugged into most European countries’ mentality and corporate/government aspirations. Those entities are only waiting for their chance to act, having long ago decided that traditional European urbanism must be erased in the name of progress. In doing so, they betray a fundamental misunderstanding of the evolutionary nature of human environments, and the highly pertinent aggregated information in these older urban places. Planners put far too great a faith on a naive conception of the enduring “modernity” of relatively primitive industrial technology. Thus they exclude large areas of highly pertinent solution-space, for no other reason than the outmoded dictates of fashion.

The developing world presents yet another set of challenges. In many places one sees, side by side with American-style sprawl developments, “informal settlements”: squatter villages and slums. These communities present challenges, but also opportunities. They are severely deficient in standards of sanitation, access to basic resources like clean water, access to transportation, adequate space and ventilation. Yet they feature

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characteristics of self-organization that can result in remarkably high-quality urban morphology. A strategy to combine their highly networked, highly efficient urban structure with the advanced sanitation and other amenities of the adjacent suburbs offers an ideal combination of properties — in the developing world, and in the developed world as well.

Our model of reconstruction is essentially about connectivity and not about geometrical typologies per se (that is, we are not excluding connective typologies as they embody connective structures in patterns, but we don’t impose any specific geometry, either). It can work on informal settlements to make them into more humane urban environments. There is no need to bulldoze them and replace them either with high-rise towers, or with American-style sprawl, yet this is what government agencies are waiting to do when they have enough funds. We can use what is already there, instead of rejecting it outright. Much work remains to be done to achieve this optimum, and the efforts must necessarily be tailored to each culture and political system. Each community will have to develop its own adaptive combination of political action, professional expertise and market process.

5. Five Priorities For Sustainable Suburbs. Many authors have proposed reasonable and incremental changes for urban and

suburban morphology, but implementation has been haphazard and largely unsuccessful. The reason is that urban morphology is the result of deeper generative processes, which must also be changed. The configuration of buildings is driven by the physical communications network: the street pattern and infrastructure such as the networks for sewage utilities that are normally buried underground. The networks determine to a large extent how the visible, aboveground built structure is configured, and that is not going to change until the geometry of the network changes. The network, in turn, is determined by current social, political, and industrial practices in transportation and energy use and availability. Building a subway to connect low-density sprawl makes little economic sense if the transportation patterns generating sprawl remain in place; such a high capacity heavy rail system should be reserved for a medium-to-high density city.

Dynamic processes drive a city to function as a network, and it is essential to grasp them. A new understanding comes as a result of the recent application of scientific methods to urban structure, which are not generally known to the majority of practitioners. Key concepts and results were developed by the authors and our friends (see Appendix II). We have drawn on morphogenesis, as developed in biology, and on the science of networks. Christopher Alexander has shown how complex form is coherent or not, depending upon the process by which it evolves, and this relies on the sequence of steps that are allowed (Alexander, 2005). Healthy urban evolution can thus be guided by a relatively simple set of codes. Conversely, the wrong codes will grow a monster, regardless of the measures taken later to impose a particular form. Such changes, we believe, can be made in piecemeal fashion, much as living organisms grow new blood vessels to organs as those develop. This will require a different management approach, and a radically different urban strategy.

The network model of cities reveals that urban forces are very different from the physical form that we usually see. Every piece of healthy urban fabric is characterized by

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a coherent, robust network structure. The properties that make it robust are precisely those that minimize network breakdown from random cuts (studied extensively by the US military in reference to the internet and the electronic communications networks). Our method is to identify the urban network, then to channel its growth so as to make it as robust as possible. Then, any perturbation is much less likely to lead to a catastrophic collapse. Our results translated into physical form lead us to propose a geometrically complex urban fabric, which is inhomogeneous and extensively connected. We can only provide the barest outline here of what is an entirely new understanding of urban structure.

Below, we outline a five-part incremental strategy, combining elements of bottom-up and top-down processes. This strategy relies upon conscious interventions and choices at three levels simultaneously: at the democratic level, wherein the shared public realm is collectively managed; at the professional level, wherein scientifically informed judgments are responsibly applied; and at the level of market exchange, wherein complex processes achieve emergent results. In any effective strategy, these three realms must be seen as elements of a complex morphogenetic process, and managed accordingly.

We should emphasize that specific cases have to be studied in detail, and solutions tailored to the location. Still, we feel that these guidelines give at least a first appreciation of this methodology, and may be instantly implemented even by those who do not wish to delve any deeper into the theoretical aspects. Technical terms used below will be explained later in the appendices given at the end of this Chapter. More advanced work is under way, working with our research colleagues to develop a new generation of codes for the different zones in the reconstructed city.

Some Notes on the Methodology:

STEP 1. A suburban area will be examined with particular attention paid to its overall size, geometry, connective network structure, and existing physical boundaries. If it meets the maximal pedestrian catchment size of being walkable in its longest dimension in 30 minutes, then we can proceed to step 2 (see Appendix III). If either its largest dimension, or its area, is too large, then the region needs to be subdivided into one or more pedestrian catchment regions. This is achieved by a variety of means helping to physically enhance and articulate clearly-identifiable limits. Such geographical solutions include boundaries, divisions, and a semi-permeable system of neighborhood enclosure. It is essential to provide an encompassing and unambiguous understanding of neighborhood edge. Articulations can be features of natural landscape like canals, lakes, parks, gardens, forest or hedges, often developed from existing site potentials, or created from scratch in derelict or neutral urban edges. Otherwise, they can be urban constructs, like planted avenues and boulevards, urban service strips, and complex thresholds of new public spaces alternating with sophisticated park strips and parkway systems.

Boundaries can eventually be accentuated with the building of a substantial but permeable wall that will separate the catchment regions. This wall does not have to be a literal and uniform continuous wall construction, but should consist of a series of

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connected buildings articulating public spaces, enclosed courtyards and gardens, sections of walls, gates, and monuments. This edge will create an enclosing complex sequence of architectural and urban events supporting the concept of neighborhood boundary.

STEP 2. Houses that adjoin the outer boundary (whether physical boundary patterns or wall system patterns) will define the outer, lowest-density region of the suburb. This outer region (envisioned more as a ribbon than a disk) is going to be no more than a few houses in width, and will partially encircle the rest of the suburban region. As American suburbs use a block size of two houses width, this means that the outer region will contain at most several blocks (i.e., it should not continue outwards indefinitely). The vehicular roads should reinforce the encircling geometry as much as possible. The outer region will follow a zoning that is similar to Duany-Plater-Zyberk Smart Code for Zone T3 (see Appendix IV). While the density here looks the same as the typical suburb, the connectivity is drastically increased, and the traffic patterns become pedestrian-friendly.

STEP 3. The regional center will be the approximate geographical center of the

pedestrian catchment region (Appendix III). New zoning codes will permit mixed-use buildings up to a maximum of three to five stories high, depending on the situation. We could have a commercial ground floor, a possible mezzanine with commercial or office space, and the rest of the building devoted to housing. Present setback and closeness restrictions will be immediately abandoned, and new zoning for an urban center will be adopted. The central region will be limited to very roughly 20% of the total suburban region, or less, and its outer edge will be strictly marked and maintained. Some such limitation is necessary to prevent the regional center from taking over the intermediate-density portion of the catchment region (because of higher commercial value), and this also follows because traditional good and efficient cities are organized this way.

STEP 4. The intermediate ring — a region between the outer low-density region and

the regional center — will be opened up to mixed use, and zoning will be changed to allow, but not require, closely-built two and three-storey buildings. This region will follow a specific zoning code intermediate between the outer region and the urban center (similar to the Duany-Plater-Zyberk Smart Code for region T4). This is meant to grow into a separate entity that has its own unique characteristics — neither low-density, nor central region, but a relaxed mixed-use urban fabric reminiscent of traditional small towns. We suggest that a wider typological variety be encouraged, allowing for diverse budget categories of inhabitants. The necessary inclusion of public housing (spread carefully, and in a small percentage mix) distributed throughout the whole area can prevent ghetto like apartment blocks or segregated regions that nowadays mark our cities. Streets can be narrowed, and setback restrictions abandoned to allow denser urban fabric.

STEP 5. The only major restructuring that is necessarily carried out by government agencies directly will be on the road structure. Everything else can be left to commercial forces. The outer region will mostly be left alone. The intermediate ring will have to be

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connected with the central region via radial roads: no more than two of them need be introduced, if not already there. Incremental steps will then begin to reconfigure the connections. At present, vehicular roads are straight and wide, opening up to substantial and broad parking lots. Pedestrian paths, if they exist at all, are narrow, tortuous, and fragmented. These characteristics must be reversed. New direct pedestrian paths will link pedestrian open plazas (some taken over from existing parking lots), in a continuous network. New vehicular roads will guarantee car access to many smaller and narrower parking lots, connected in a roundabout manner (Chapter 2; Alexander, 2005).

Most suburbs don’t have this geometry, so the city must decide to open several narrow roads and close some wide roads around the regional center. These are distinct from the feeder road that now connects to the exterior of the suburb itself. Internal roads need not be as wide as the excessively broad streets in existing suburbs, so they can be built between houses, or by combining empty lots. Access for emergency vehicles will be guaranteed by pedestrian paths that can handle an occasional ambulance or fire truck.

A word on our choice of terminology: the intermediate “ring” could have any overall

geometry. All we mean is that it roughly encloses a regional center with distinct characteristics, and is itself enclosed by a loosely surrounding outer region. We have no intention of imposing a definite simplistic geometry on the urban fabric. A fixation with pure geometry has been the downfall of urbanism of the past several decades. A particular complex geometrical network will evolve as the fabric becomes alive with human activity, and that involves internal connectivity, not overall shapes. Our aim is strictly to re-make a region that is now homogeneous and disconnected on the short scale, into a strongly-connected, inhomogeneous and complex system (described later in this Chapter).

6. Being Prepared for the Prospect of Drastic Change. Our task as urbanists has to deal with evolving alternative scenarios for the future. We

cannot predict what will actually happen, but change often comes unexpectedly. Even though thinkers may predict coming change decades ahead, those in a position to implement changes invariably ignore evolving conditions until a crisis arrives. Then, there is a scramble to react to a crisis situation. At such a time, it is highly probable that unworkable short-term expedients are adopted out of panic, as opposed to carefully thought-out longer-term solutions. We are convinced that the present government/commercial/industrial system that builds suburbia is going to continue to do things the same way out of inertia, thus leading to catastrophic change at some point in the future. When gradual evolutionary change is thwarted, change comes all at once.

Suburban development is heavily dominated by the protocols of major national retail and development corporations, which focus on the bottom line of profits (so that their stock can survive in the stock market). They have a stated policy of risk-aversion that will not allow even a minor change in current procedure, in case profits dip in any way. Customer surveys indicate that people still yearn for the utopian 1950s house in the green suburb, so builders continue to provide it (albeit in a dreary, isolated new sprawl

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development rather than out in the real countryside). Massive advertising campaigns project the desirable image of the same 1950s house in the green suburb, so, really, the customer surveys just give back the industry’s advertised unsustainable image that is fed to consumers by the media. This is a self-feeding deception. Our discussions with major developers find many willing new urbanists in their employ who have been unable to convince central headquarters to try sustainable solutions in practice. The reason given is a possible (imagined but not actually verified) short-term risk in profits.

Nor is it necessarily true that climbing energy prices will force developers to rethink their unsustainable typologies, at least in the short term. For example, there has been discussion of a concept to insert a developer-owned gasoline station at the entrance of each new suburban development, and sell subsidized gasoline to residents. This would of course be a major selling point for new suburban sprawl developments, as long as developers can continue to subsidize the gasoline. Of course, developers walk away from older developments, so those residents will have to buy their gasoline at market price, whatever that is going to be. We have here a mechanism favoring the abandonment of older urban fabric for the newest sprawl development, which is of course in the interest of developers. The increased profits may well overcome losses in this particular gasoline subsidy, until there is finally a catastrophic collapse at the point beyond which the subsidy can no longer be maintained.

Needless to say, the conventional thinking of governments and developers has not yet come to terms with the scope of changes needed, and the more sustainable geometries needed are not being incorporated sufficiently into current projects. This attitude will make it more difficult to retrofit existing suburbs that have their entire infrastructure planned for unsustainable sprawl. First, there is tremendous reluctance to change the position of a street, even if its location and size lead to serious problems. Second, the below-ground infrastructure — and the legal boundaries that it must follow — is there to stay. As we found out after natural disasters that wipe out the built urban fabric, a city is forced for economic reasons to reuse the below-ground infrastructure. This severely limits the possibilities for sustainable redevelopment, by limiting the possible built geometry above ground. When sufficient pressure comes from societal forces to affect a major change, the economics of an urban crisis situation will frustrate the needed revisions in the infrastructure. For that reason, it is essential to be thinking ahead nowadays to a more flexible, more “dynamic” approach, when building the road pattern and infrastructure.

This Chapter addresses the reconstruction of residential suburban regions. One component of the proposed solution is to insert commercial nodes in an organic manner. The opposite problem of taming the regions of purely commercial sprawl is a separate issue, which is discussed in more detail elsewhere (Salingaros, 2005). Nevertheless, the two problems are tied. Today, the commercial sector has developed building and urban typologies that are designed almost exclusively for automobile access within a sprawl geometry. Even if encouraged to insert commercial nodes into previously residential urban fabric, the easiest expedient for them is simply to transplant the same typology into the suburb. That destroys whatever urban fabric exists there, and prevents new urban fabric from forming around the transplanted node. The geometry is simply non-connective on the proper scales.

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The majority of commercial buildings are commissioned by large national and multinational corporations, which have developed a “one-size-fits-all” typology geared to the car-dependent landscape. Those businesses that are genuinely local tend to copy the prototypes built by the large chains, so the effect is the same. Local contractors get used to building the same model over and over. Given the locked-in economics, no one wants to face the harsh reality that car-dependent geometries kill the city. A restaurant, office building, or store embodying the sprawl geometry destabilizes a wide region around its parking lot. It is for this reason that we have to be extremely careful to apply new typologies appropriate to the mixed (pedestrian plus vehicular) urban fabric that is our primary goal. Simply continuing to apply the present templates for commercial nodes will not improve suburbia, but will only lead to more traffic congestion, making the present unsustainable situation even worse.

7. The Small-Scale Approach. We need to acknowledge the sheer size of suburban real estate and recognize that to

reform its shortcomings is a hugely massive task. This vast structure, accommodating over half of all urban dwellers in the USA and Europe, was not created overnight — and its repair will not occur overnight. Rather than seeking massive top-down reconstruction projects (which have so often failed in the past anyway) we suggest that a more powerful and more effective strategy is to make piecemeal changes. These are to be effected both in physical projects, and in what may be called the suburban “operating system”: i.e., the system of codes, regulations, and economic incentives. It is this legislated code structure that produced suburban morphology in the first place. We must provide tools that exploit small points of incremental change, which serve to re-connect the present fragmented structure into a more coherent, more functional urban system. Like gardeners planting seeds, and pruning or weeding a bit here and there, we must seek to induce organic processes of regeneration and reconstruction.

Following is a more detailed proposal of how to achieve such an incremental process of transformation. All of these suggestions need to be initiated by an immediate change in the zoning and construction codes, so our first task is a legislative one, not an architectural or urban one. Cognizant of the immense difficulties of changing codes, we have devoted the final section of this Chapter to this problem. These necessary changes are not necessarily in order of implementation, as a number of these changes must be done in tandem, or in a back-and-forth iteration.

PRIORITY ONE: Define new neighborhood structures of centers and boundaries. We need to redirect the existing suburban systems towards a networked pattern of

neighborhoods with public centers and boundaries. Often these are emergent or latent structures already in place, perhaps around an existing civic or retail amenity. A town center will be defined as the geographical center of a roughly bounded urban region. Every neighborhood needs a clearly defined public space, well connected to the neighborhood street network, and enclosed by mixed-use buildings and public buildings. These urban typologies have been avoided in post-war urbanism as being reminiscent of

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the past, but their need has been picked up by the commercial sector, which has reconstructed them (to great profit) in private shopping areas.

Here it is necessary to reverse the misguided ideology of placing the region’s heart on the geographical edge, in an attempt to draw in car traffic to commercial nodes from as far away as possible. That measure only served to disconnect a commercial node from its immediate neighbors, leaving an urban region without a heart, and encouraging the proliferation of disconnected commercial strips all over the landscape. This dead geometry was the price paid for giving parking an exaggerated visibility, and sacrificing everything else to this absolute priority. There was never any need for such a drastic and ultimately disastrous geometrical reorganization. A rehabilitation can easily work now, with parking very carefully thought out so that it is convenient, sufficient, but unobtrusive.

Healthy urban fabric is supported by many permeable boundaries. These were either eliminated, or replaced with impermeable boundaries: both anti-urban measures. The neighborhood needs to have a clearly understandable boundary, which can be an avenue, planted alley, a natural feature, or a landscaped system. This is a distinct idea from an isolating, impermeable boundary, such as a wall around a gated community. We are referring to the need for a psychological boundary, which enables the network geometry to take place, and not so much to a restrictive physical boundary that cuts connections.

Typically, the regional center will offer opportunities for more elaborate, denser typologies, whereas the edge of the neighborhood can offer larger lots and different functional activities like light industry, larger institutional buildings, and suburban villa typologies with larger gardens. In this way, many of the choices of a low-density lifestyle that motivated suburban growth in the first instance can be maintained, but within a system that preserves walkability and integration. The key is to break up the present homogenous low-density geometry into regions of distinct density. Homogeneous sprawl is weighed down by its size, and becomes unwieldy and eventually dysfunctional, whereas heterogeneous adjacent regions can be made to support each other.

PRIORITY TWO: Network the existing infrastructure. The transport infrastructure of suburbia lacks several efficient levels of network

connectivity. The existing hub-hierarchy network kills local connections, and must be reversed by connecting on the same, small scale. Healthy urban fabric requires better networking, nodes, and pedestrian pathways. More pathways and pedestrian routes, as well as connecting residential alleys and streets, need to be created to irrigate the suburban areas. An easy step is to switch the roles of road and alley: direct car traffic into the alley, and protect part of the main road as a continuation of the pedestrian network. Since active paths form only between complementary urban nodes, however, a prerequisite for suburban connectivity is the introduction of mixed use. This means an immediate legislative opening of commercial use within existing suburban subdivisions. Concerns of noise and pollution (part of the original reason for functional segregation) can be maintained by restricting what can be allowed into formerly purely residential zones — for example, nothing that requires vast parking needs, or that generates excessive noise and pollution.

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With that in mind, suburbs need to create short, walkable new streets as an opportunity of progressively densifying, and opening the process of importing new mixed-use typologies. We should create new pedestrian and bicycle connections on existing streets and with additional short path and lanes. This implies a radically new connective geometry (although one to be achieved with very modest means). We will also develop a fully connective pedestrian and mixed-mode vehicular network.

Dangerous, isolated or unpleasant segments (where pedestrians feel threatened by vehicles) will be identified and repaired. We need to liberalize road standards to allow skinny streets, irregular geometries, the incursion of shop-front activities, boulevard layouts, and other more pedestrian-friendly street and path patterns. The principle of the walking citizen is an indispensable measure as a tool for all of these additional connections. Through a reasonable number of phases, new connections should cut through all the scales of the street armature and dimension of both the distances between the intersections and nodes, and also simultaneously reduce the size of suburban blocks and lots.

PRIORITY THREE: Insert monumental connections, screens, and vistas. Once the smaller pathways and streets have been increased and the connections

multiplied and enriched, stronger interventions are required at a larger scale in order to create connections between main centers, monumental structures, and social and cultural attractors. Key elements of this can be done quickly, as Haussmann did so successfully with the boulevards of Paris in the mid-nineteenth century. But in any case, the elements should be identified, and a plan for their progressive implementation should be adopted. Opening radial connections will have to sacrifice some built structures (as occurred in Paris), and this is an essential step to increasing connectivity. Massive rebuilding is not necessary, nor is it necessary to do everything at once.

We need to identify and build monumental connection points and terminating vistas. These don’t exist in today’s homogeneous sprawl, and will have to be built anew. Commerce entering a dormitory suburb will be encouraged to build so as to create a visual landmark (and be severely penalized if they try to continue the present alienating practice of isolating themselves with vast parking lots). The goal is to identify and reinforce a network of larger avenues, boulevards, parkways and planted alleys forming a monumental network, with a comfortable section integrating bike and pedestrian lanes, transit lines, and reasonably efficient automobile traffic. Along these avenues, alleys and boulevards, the codes will encourage the construction of a coherent street-wall frontage with mixed-use urban typologies between 2 minimum and 5 maximum floors, with progressive setbacks for upper stories (see Priority 5 for more on this).

The perspective intersections and street terminations should be reserved for public buildings, monuments, sculptural elements, or larger landscape arrangements. The underlying planning principle is to use pedestrian visual feedback to anchor the urban spaces, rather than prioritizing vehicular traffic from looking at a plan, as is done nowadays (in a process that totally ignores the pedestrian experience).

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PRIORITY FOUR: Divide oversized blocks into urban blocks (the scissors technique).

This technique, developed by Léon Krier (1984), rationally reorganizes larger mega-structures into their organic components, divided by a pattern of convivial public urban spaces. In many cities, post-war planning merged small urban blocks to create superblocks, and this mistake was copied as a template for the suburbs. We now have to do the opposite. The process begins by cutting pathways and streets into larger urbanization blocks. Their excessive present size opposes natural pedestrian connections and forces purely automobile transportation.

Our proposed outer suburban region should not be misunderstood as being composed of vast narrow housing or commercial blocks, as is often the case today within sprawl. We mean for every region to be crosscut with roads, paths, and connections, otherwise it becomes an anti-urban typology. Whenever an overall urban geometry is impermeable, both pedestrian and vehicular traffic are diverted to the region’s edge, so that internal connectivity suffers. The connectivity should become multiple (i.e., composed of overlapping networks), so that it is not exclusively dictated by the vehicular roads.

We need to continue the pattern of connectivity at smaller scales, with passageways, internal courtyards and gardens, covered passages and galleries, etc. Any sacrifice of private property will be compensated with the creation of new urbanizable land and potentially valuable real estate on new public spaces. Note that connectivity need not apply simultaneously for all transport modes: where a new road does not fit, a bike trail and footpath improve the situation. Healthy urban fabric requires the superposition of distinct connective networks, consisting of footpaths, bicycle paths, mixed pedestrian/car roads, and regular streets for traffic. The one-size-fits-all approach to traffic, mistakenly applied in the post-war years, has left us with a dismal overall urban connectivity.

PRIORITY FIVE: Change the “operating system” of suburbia to facilitate further

incremental reform. We need to reform the zoning for any new development, and for incremental infill.

New zoning codes must allow the construction of mixed-use New Towns with dense centers — well integrated into the transport system, having coherent, pedestrian-friendly street geometries, and having environmentally low-impact qualities. We need to end the coded bias toward monofunctional, mono-social, homogeneous, and mono-typological patterns of development.

Disincentives should be created against urban expansion into new (virgin or agricultural) areas, including a shifted burden onto permit applicants to demonstrate that market demand cannot be met within existing suburbs, and cannot be developed by infill, densification, and reconstruction of derelict areas. The way to achieve this is to charge steep development impact fees for those projects that do not meet this burden. The market will eventually take care of this, once a major subsidy in food production is phased out. Increased energy prices will make close-by farmland extremely valuable, as the low transportation costs that currently subsidize long-distance agricultural production will cease.

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Legislation will create incentives for high-density new development (focusing on filling in the central core region), and disincentives for maintaining low density throughout within existing suburbs. Our model sets forth a specific notion of heterogeneous urban fabric, in which low density has its place but cannot spread throughout a region. We need to encourage densification of existing low-density building with financial and tax incentives structured to generate regions of decreasing density around a central core. Restrictive setbacks and onerous use restrictions will be liberalized. Building low density on larger lots outside a well-defined outer ribbon will be discouraged.

We need to work to reform other sprawl-promoting practices such as (in the USA) mortgage redlining, Federal highway incentives, FNMA (“Fannie Mae”) mortgage restrictions on mixed use, and the like. Banks will play an increasingly decisive role, by refusing to lend money for an obviously urban-destroying project. Growing public awareness of the new connective geometry of sustainable urban fabric puts lending institutions in the spotlight as principal players in this urban game.

8. Putting It All Together Into the Fractal City. We have summarized our working methods as a blueprint for suburban reconstruction.

The main idea is to use existing suburbs with as little intervention as necessary, but with a change in zoning and planning codes as promptly as possible, to encourage sustainable urban growth from this time onwards. “Bottom-up” commercial forces, in concert with shrewd “top-down” adjustments, will then take care of the reconstruction. We indicate the direction for reconstruction by providing codes, and exploit normal urban forces to take care of the process at their own pace. We are also optimistic that, with the correct legislation in place, the commercial sector will fund a significant portion of the reconstruction, not out of any ideological desire for a better urbanism, but simply as a smart process to do better business.

In the particular implementation methodology we offer, each suburb will be analyzed according to a technique we have developed, and for which details and implementation are available from Katarxis Urban Workshops (Appendix II). Here we only presented an outline to indicate the utility of this method. Different regions and localities will need individual study and recommendations, and that will necessitate a site analysis and report from our team. The theoretical concept of “fractal city” at the base of our method is explained further in (Salingaros, 2005) (see Appendix V).

Our initial conceptualization leads us to subdivide an existing homogeneous suburb into regions of different density and mixture of uses. These regions will have a geometry that initially depends on the site and existing conditions. As the urban fabric grows, however, regions of distinct urban character will develop a noticeable geometrical similarity, a process that we denote as “fractalizing the suburb” (see Appendix V).

This appearance will have nothing to do with basic geometric shapes (rectangles, circles, hexagons) that urbanists have traditionally imposed on a plan. The new urban geometry instead refers to network connectivity, a much more advanced scientific concept than simplistic geometrical figures taken from a schoolbook. Living urban fabric

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will grow to resemble an electronic circuit board or microchip, where every node is connected, and where any geometrical regularity has been sacrificed to establishing network connectivity. True urban geometry is far removed from the shapes that were thought to define urban morphology during the past several decades (Salingaros, 2005).

Exactly the same problem occurs in suburban regions, whose geometry impedes urban connectivity (see Appendix VI). Because in many cases, suburban geometry consists of amorphous blobs and ribbons (superficially copying the plans of picturesque traditional settlements), it was thought that this would permit a liveliness denied by a rectangular grid. That is a misunderstanding. Amorphous suburban geometry is presently disconnected — it is totally rigid. Both a blob-and-ribbon geometry (found in high income suburbs and in the poorest favelas) and a rectangular plan (found in rigidly planned urbanism) can evolve into living urban fabric by the reconnective processes we describe. They must be allowed to do so by the codes in place. Neither initial geometry is “better”, nor does either geometry guarantee a living urban fabric. During its evolution into living urban fabric, a rectangular geometry will deform and become more complex on the small scale; whereas an amorphous geometry will straighten out on the large scale (a very successful “top-down” example of the latter being the straightening out of Medieval Paris by Haussmann).

Since there is no specific recommended urban geometry, the shape of distinct urban regions is dependent upon the site. Initially the whole suburban region is encouraged to evolve into distinct urban regions in an approximate sequence of connected pieces. Forces that act on different scale hierarchies will not be suppressed to maintain the homogeneous or segregated geometry, as is done nowadays, but will be guided to grow the network. The evolution of the network determines the urban morphology, and not vice-versa. The overall coherent geometry must be supported by the road grid. If existing roads contradict or impede the evolution of urban fabric towards a circuit-board geometry, then some roads will need to be changed before that particular region can be regenerated. In most cases, the vehicular road grid itself can survive mostly unchanged, although road widths and curb radii will probably have to be adjusted.

A circuit board has to handle many connections of entirely different character, some needing the shortest path, and others accommodated by less direct couplings. Healthy urban fabric establishes fragile pedestrian connections (which require straight paths, and reinforcement by surrounding built structures), and also the much more elastic vehicular connections. Cars and trucks can drive on a looped path without any problem, as long as the roads are easy to navigate. Also, cars and trucks need not drive fast within a moderately complex urban fabric. The key to connectivity and movement is access, not speed, thus reversing the priorities of several generations of planners. It is necessary to accommodate two distinct networks having mutually exclusive characteristics: pedestrian paths connecting urban spaces, on the one hand; and vehicular roads connecting parking lots, on the other. These two networks must interface, cross each other, and occasionally run in parallel. The second must not be allowed to erase the first. Most important, we must not confuse the totally distinct characteristics of these two networks and apply them to the wrong one.

Pathological portions of any urban region will reveal themselves after several small-scale interventions fail to bring that region to life. Everyone recognizes shops and

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restaurants whose successive operators repeatedly fail; parks and playgrounds that are gloomy and thus unused; open plazas that feel deadly — it has something to do with their geometry, although citizens find it difficult to pinpoint exactly what the flaw is. It could be that the geometry of built structures is simply not salvageable: it has the wrong shape, orientation, position, etc., which frustrates connectivity to the urban fabric. A dead geometry cannot be resurrected. An anti-urban (intentionally disconnecting) geometry was imprinted in the minds of architects and planners after the Second World War, and thus countless buildings erected since codify it. In that case one has to decide to act in a top-down manner and replace what is there. To do otherwise would be to waste resources on “Band-Aid” solutions, where a more drastic solution is needed. We repeat, however, that such a large-scale intervention is recommended only as a last resort, and not as a general approach.

For this method to be applied, the city or municipality to which the suburb in question belongs must be ready to promptly change its zoning codes to enable our connecting process to take effect. Communities who refuse to change their anti-urban and unsustainable zoning codes must be left to suffer the eventual consequences of dysfunctionality in the future. That is an evolutionary law of nature: entities that do not adapt to changing circumstances are condemned to become redundant or unusable as conditions evolve. Again, we believe that this process will be market-driven, in the best sense (which certainly does not include industry advertising urging people to support an unsustainable product through intentional misinformation). The choices that consumers make in the market will thus be linked more closely to policy choices they make as citizens in a democracy, informed by responsible professionals. Thus responsible citizens will soon learn to invest solely in those communities that have adopted these forward-looking planning codes, which will at the same time improve the civic quality of their home cities, and guarantee their real-estate investment for the decades to come.

9. Legislation Prevents Or Encourages Reconstruction. There are presently in place neighborhood review boards, homeowners’ associations,

etc. that have some influence on new building and rebuilding of the urban fabric. These oversight entities should begin to use our prescriptions for the regeneration of that suburb or region (abandoning their present guidelines, most of which lead away from a sustainable urban fabric). This concept should work no less in any conventional suburb than in a downtown, where a process of approval is now taken for granted. The idea is to implement all these proposed guidelines in practical form.

We certainly take the view that urbanists should not get mired in endless legal wrangling, possibly getting “shot down” by some hierarchical authority. But often it is impossible to make the kinds of design changes needed without at least suspending the present requirements. That may be a particularly bad problem in the USA, where Le Corbusier style segregated zoning and unbelievably large building setbacks, wide roads, low densities, etc. have such a stranglehold because they are legislated into codes. Unfortunately, this post-war US planning model is still being embraced by other countries who seek to achieve US-style prosperity, and who are not yet aware of the model’s growing disadvantages. But here, too, we need an incremental strategy. Our

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recommendation is that urbanists take whatever steps they can based on the local conditions and the local political will, and not waste time tilting at windmills.

In the above Section entitled “The Small Scale Approach” we prioritize Coding and Legal Action. Regarding previous arguments about top-down and bottom-up strategies, immediate short-term interventions (as well as the possibility to impact the larger context with smaller economic interventions, etc.), there exists a definite dilemma here. Political work and legal strategies are often tedious, long, and depend upon triggering top-down effects. Also, the relationship between legal action, coding, and their implementation is an enormously time-consuming process, involving a lot of lobbying and long-term strategies. That’s the reason why we do not insist on a definite sequence for the stages of urban action. Sometimes, the coding could be a priority; for example, the coding could be a limited project that depends on coding only. At other times, there could be a larger coding effort on the regional scale like the Traditional Neighborhood Codes developed by Duany-Plater-Zyberk (see Appendix IV).

Physical urban and architectural changes can even happen without necessarily introducing new codes, or they can take advantage of legal ambiguities. Interestingly, most projects need to be accompanied by a written document including legal and code aspects, but one wouldn’t say that the coding was the most essential. It is rather the integration of didactic physical design and subtle and integrated coding that empowers the project. We definitely agree with the incredible emergency and need for a full and comprehensive legal revision and re-coding strategy. In the context of this Chapter, however, we clearly stress feasible, short-term, tangible policies and actions. We balance these goals within a larger context of more thorough political and legal objectives to be aimed at. We are more supportive of efforts on an intermediate time frame. It will be the combined actions at various scales and levels that will constitute an overwhelming challenge to the obsoleteness of legal planning inertia, and will finally accelerate massive and drastic overhaul.

That said, the problem of this bureaucratic stranglehold is very serious. Sometimes it is not even the local zoning that prevents suburban reconstruction. For example, our associates and we have recently experienced enormous problems in Mississippi (following the devastation by hurricane Katrina) from onerous regulations. For example, the Department of Transportation refuses to budge on its wide-road protocols, including enormous building setbacks. The only way out of this impasse was achieved by New Urbanists marshalling the Governor and other forces to come in and neutralize the stranglehold of the Department of Transportation. The US Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has also required draconian building forms in order to get flood insurance: no street-level activities; everything up on stilts; all garages below, etc. If so much as ONE resident in a community builds their house in a non-conforming way, the ENTIRE community gets denied flood insurance. This effectively means that they get denied mortgages!

Based on these practical examples, we don’t see how we can avoid the political and legal realm. Even so, we need to try and stick to the incremental approach: “ to do what you can when you can”. At the same time, we offer our strategy in a flexible enough way to allow people to sequence things in the optimal manner that their local requirements allow. This is what is meant by our phrase “change the operating system”. Some of these

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legislated restrictions and impositions (relatively dry topics by themselves, but extremely dangerous) are like bits of malicious software, viruses even, which determine all kinds of unpleasant outcomes for the urban fabric, and prevent their remedies.

10. Conclusion. The evidence already shows that the modern suburb in its current disintegrated form

(sprawl) is not a sustainable form of development, and needs to be reformed. This problem is particularly important, as the developing world looks to the developed world for leadership in its own new, unavoidable suburban development. But this reform need not take away the characteristics that drove suburban expansion in the first place: a greener and more rural livable environment, access to larger homes on larger properties, use of the automobile as an option (and not as a necessity), and so on. Instead, reform needs to be aimed at creating a richer and more connected structure, allowing alternative modes of transport, greater ranges and locations for activities, and greater coverage of property. In this sense, the reforms presented here are less about limiting choice, and more about expanding choice and diversity.

Along with these reforms must go a reform in our thinking about cities, and what Jane Jacobs termed “the kind of problem a city is”. We must cease to assume that changes can only happen with massive, expensive, “top-down” solutions. Indeed, we do not believe that a massive, top-down approach will even succeed in addressing the connective failures of modern suburbia, assuming that one was even feasible in this age of growing pressure on public revenues. Rather, a new kind of strategic and iterative mix of top-down and bottom-up approaches will be necessary. Strategic reform of the “operating system” that generates suburbia will result in emerging changes in the existing structure. Relatively small economic management tools, such as shifts in tax policy, can be powerful bottom-up tools. (One powerful economic change may already be happening: a drastic escalation in energy costs, which may well trigger major suburban reconstruction.) Relatively small pilot projects and incremental connective elements can act as catalysts for more growth.

To be sure, some top-down tools are useful, if carefully applied. Occasionally, new infrastructure can be a very useful intervention — new light rail lines, for example. We value the lessons provided by the best urban reconstructions of the past, including Haussmann’s transformations of Paris, Burnham’s work in Chicago, and others. Key changes were made in strategic areas, while large areas between them were kept mostly intact. Those successful approaches were highly selective: changing a minimum of the geometry to make a maximum of difference to the functioning of the whole.

We need also to keep in mind what can go horribly wrong with a heavy-handed top-down approach. Unfortunately the utopian architect Le Corbusier offers us perhaps the most cautionary tale here, as his legacy was implemented disastrously in many cities, including New York under Robert Moses, and Algiers under the post-war French colonial government. (Thankfully, Le Corbusier’s horrific Voisin Plan for Paris was not implemented, although the suburbs of Paris were built in this image, and their recent eruption in riots cannot entirely be dissociated from their urban form).

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All of these lessons remind us of the power of change over time — the power of emergent processes, and “game theory” dynamics — and the need to make interventions very carefully, intelligently and sensitively. We believe this can be accomplished with a new toolbox of the sort outlined here. Much more work needs to be done to develop detailed strategies for such tools in varying contexts, and to document their likely results. However, we do believe that with such an improved understanding, we can act on a complex system like a contemporary suburb and, with the right diagnosis, in effect, heal it, much like a doctor heals a sick patient without major surgery. Or, to return to the gardening metaphor, it may not be necessary or even desirable to clear the old weedy garden; we may find that a bit of pruning and weeding, and a few seeds strategically planted, can, with a bit of time, produce a very nice garden indeed.

APPENDIX I: Hierarchies and Connectivity. Hierarchy plays a central role in understanding urban structure. A hierarchy is simply a

collection of similar objects (such as roads, or buildings) of different size and capacity. A natural hierarchy contains representatives of different sizes, and not only one size. All cities are formed of multiple hierarchies. The crucial difference is how those hierarchies are connected. A hub-hierarchy requires that each movement go to the top of the hierarchy before coming down to a lower level. We take the word from its use in airline routes, where all connections have to go through a central hub. That is analogous to having to take the expressway simply to buy a gallon of milk. Thus, all connections are forced to constantly go up and down the hierarchy. A multiply-connected hierarchy, on the other hand, allows one to connect to equal low levels in the hierarchy directly. This important point was first clarified by Christopher Alexander (1965) in a seminal essay, who used the mathematical terms “tree” for a hub-hierarchy, and “semilattice” for a multiply-connected hierarchy.

APPENDIX II: Katarxis Urban Workshops. Katarxis Urban Workshops is an international nonprofit organization established to

spearhead the urban reconstruction necessary for a sustainable future. Based in Luxembourg City, it is a consultant to governments, commercial developers, and academic institutions seeking to implement sustainable urban solutions. Periodic teaching seminars train participants in new, scientific techniques of urban regeneration. Katarxis Urban Workshops publishes “Katarxis”, the highly acclaimed online publication, which relates new traditional architecture with the latest scientific advances in understanding complex architectural and urban form. President Lucien Steil is an internationally-known Traditional Architect and educator, and founding member of C.E.U. (Council for European Urbanism). Vice-President Nikos Salingaros is Professor of Mathematics, author of three seminal books on architecture and urbanism, and a contributor to the “New Athens Charter”. Secretary Michael Mehaffy is a project consultant and educator, and co-founder with Christopher Alexander of the Environmental Structure Research Group — ESRG, which conducts research on new kinds of urban coding. Steil and

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Mehaffy were founding contributors to the “Viseu Declaration on Architectural Education”.

APPENDIX III: Pedestrian Catchment Region. This is based on the old idea of a traditional walking neighborhood. Every house must

be connected by a footpath to the region’s geographical center in a way that a person takes from 10 to 15 minutes to walk from a residence to the center. That means that the entire region could be walked across its largest dimension in 20 to 30 minutes. Specific figures depend upon climate, locality, and culture, and are being studied by the Katarxis research team. We refer back to the concept of central place theory of Chrystaller, which is verified by every student of urbanism seeing how central places develop out of randomness. Nevertheless, we do not seek to impose Chrystaller’s original hexagonal geometry (which we consider artificial and restrictive). Rather, we use these ideas to support the New Urbanist practice of providing footpaths crisscrossing a neighborhood. Contrary to some recent claims that were later proven wrong, pedestrian movement reduces crime.

APPENDIX IV: Duany-Plater-Zyberk Smart Code. This is a new kind of detailed zoning code that applies to most situations that concern

us here (see Duany & Plater-Zyberk, 2000; Duany et. al., 2005). In contrast to conventional “segregated use” zoning, the Smart Code identifies patterns of mixed-use configuration, organized according to a Transect gradient from urban to rural. But the system need not be linear or continuous; indeed, it is intended to achieve the more complex organic structures of traditional cities. In summary, T3 codes the Sub-Urban Zone (very different from what is usually understood as suburban) of isolated residences on large lots, but with much more housing diversity, walkability, and connectivity than what exists today. The T3 height limit is three storeys. T4 represents the denser Urban General Zone, with houses closer to each other and to the sidewalk. Mixed use is permitted, with corner stores and restaurants within walking distance of most houses. The T4 height limit is four storeys. Transect Zone T5 is the Urban Center Zone, mixing commercial uses with housing. This is analogous to the neighborhood center or small-town Main Street in early twentieth-century America, as well as the traditional European village. The T5 height limit is six storeys. Important zoning details will gradually transform the road network, since implementation of sharp curb radii and narrower streets help to calm traffic.

APPENDIX V: The Fractal City. A fractal is a complex object that displays some structure on every scale of

magnification. Its opposite is a non-fractal object that exists on one or two scales only. Today’s suburbs exist primarily on two scales: the scale of the houses, and the overall scale of the entire development. More seriously lacking is the scale of connections: all houses in a suburban development connect to nodes outside that development, thus setting an extremely high minimum size for the distribution of pathlengths in the

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connective hierarchy. As argued in Salingaros (2005), unless a complex system can interact on a hierarchy of different scales, from the very large to the very small, it is pathological. Thus, the process of “fractalizing the suburb” involves the creation of many new connections on the intermediate and smaller scales. The smallest possible connections are pedestrian ones to the immediate neighborhood — and these are entirely missing from sprawl. At the same time, commercial nodes adjoining residential nodes are now intentionally disconnected by zoning and physical barriers, thus isolating functions and contributing to a gross departure from fractal structure.

APPENDIX VI: A note on “sprawl” versus “organic” development. A number of terms used in this field are too often used imprecisely, or may have

multiple definitions. Two of the most notorious are also two key terms in this discussion: “organic” growth, and “sprawl”. Following are the precise definitions we use.

ORGANIC: Systemic in character, consisting of parts whose relationships are co-adaptive, co-evolutionary, and mutually influential. These characteristics are objective and measurable — although they may be exceedingly complex. Organic urban fabric is connected on many different scales, and this has nothing to do with superficial appearance. Suburban developments that use curved streets for visual effect do not achieve any organic qualities, even as they may resemble organic forms when seen from the air.

SPRAWL: Outer areas of an existing urban system, which are poorly differentiated, poorly inter-connected, and highly segregated by use and type. This is also called by some authors “Conventional Sprawl Development” or “CSD”. Its defining characteristic is that its components do not interact to work as a system. Instead, urban growth invades the land without connecting to it. This type of development is highly inorganic, in the sense used above.

SUBURBIA: The outer areas of an existing urban system, which have differentiated in structure away from the urban core. Healthy suburban regions are connected internally, as well as to the urban core, on which they are dependent. There is absolutely no reason for suburban growth to follow the geometrical characteristics of sprawl — it just happened to do so after the Second World War for reasons we discuss here.

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CHAPTER FIVE

THE END OF TALL BUILDINGS.

By James Howard Kunstler and Nikos A. Salingaros.

We are convinced that the age of skyscrapers is at an end. It must now be considered

an experimental building typology that has failed. We predict that no new mega-towers will be built, and existing ones are destined to be dismantled.

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1. Our world has changed dramatically. Watching video of the burning twin towers of the World Trade Center in the few

minutes before they both collapsed, we were struck by what appeared to be the whole history of the skyscraper captured in vignette. In the blocks east and south of the World Trade Center stood the earlier skyscrapers of the 20th century, including some of the most notable prototypes of that epoch. Virtually all of these pre-1930 ultra-tall buildings thrust skyward with towers, turrets, and needles, each singular in its design, as though reaching up to some great spiritual goal as yet unattained. And there, in contrast stood the two flaming towers of the World Trade Center, with their flat roofs signifying the exhaustion of that century-long aspiration to reach into the heavens, their failure made even more emphatic in the redundancy of their banal twin-ness. Then they and everything inside them imploded into vapor and dust, including several thousand New Yorkers whose bodies will likely never be found.

The United States was attacked by terrorists on September 11, 2001. With the recent tragedies comes a sobering reassessment of America’s (and the World’s) infatuation with skyscrapers. We feel very strongly that the disaster should not only be blamed on the terrorist action, but that this horrible event exposes an underlying malaise with the built environment.

We are convinced that the age of skyscrapers is at an end. It must now be considered an experimental building typology that has failed. Who will ever again feel safe and comfortable working 110 storeys above the ground? … Or sixty storeys? … Or even twenty-seven? We predict that no new mega-towers will be built, and existing ones are destined to be dismantled. This will lead to a radical transformation of city centers — which, however, would be an immensely positive step towards improving the quality of urban life. The only mega-towers left standing a century hence may be in those third-world countries that so avidly imported the bric-a-brac of the industrialized world without realizing the damage they were inflicting on their cities. This Chapter looks at criticisms of tall buildings, while offering some practical solutions.

2. Tall buildings generate urban pathologies. In a paper entitled “Theory of the Urban Web” (Salingaros, 1998) one of us outlined

structural principles for urban form. The processes that generate the urban web involve nodes, connections, and the principles of hierarchy. Among the theoretical results derived were multiple connectivity — in which a city needs to have alternative connections in order to stay healthy — and the avoidance of over concentration of nodes. When the second pathology occurs, such as in segregated use zoning, and in monofunctional mega-towers, it kills the city by creating a mathematical singularity (where one or more quantities become extremely large or infinite). Many pathologies of contemporary cities are traced to ideas of early modernist planning that appeared in a totally unrealistic context in the 1920s. We quote from that paper (Salingaros, 1998: page 62):

“Without a sufficient density and variety of nodes, functional paths (as opposed to unused ones that are purely decorative) can never form. Here we come up against the segregation and concentration of functions that has destroyed the urban web in our

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times. There are simply not enough different types of nodes in any homogeneous urban region to form a web. Even where possibilities exist, the connections are usually blocked off by misguided zoning laws. Distinct types of elements, such as residential, commercial and natural, must intertwine to catalyze the connective process. Dysfunctional cities concentrate nodes of the same type, whereas functional cities concentrate coupled pairs of contrasting nodes”.

In all cases and to some degree, high-rise buildings deform the quality, the function, and the long-term health of urbanism in general by overloading the infrastructure and the public realm of the streets that contain them. Léon Krier has referred to this as “urban hypertrophy”, making the additional point that overloading any given urban center tends to prevent the organic development of new healthy, mixed urban fabric anywhere beyond the center (Krier, 1984). Bear in mind, too, that some of the sturdiest and even aesthetically pleasing tall buildings of the early 20th century are only now approaching the end of their so-called “design life”. What is their destiny?

The worst offender in this urban destruction is the monofunctional mega-tower. Paradoxically, it has become an icon of modernity and progress — how can images from the 1920s be considered modern? Indoctrination at its most subversive has successfully identified the glass and steel boxes of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe with a phony “efficiency”. Voices raised against the skyscraper include that of the architect and urbanist Constantine Doxiades (documented in Blake, 1974: page 82):

“My greatest crime was the construction of high-rise buildings. The most successful cities of the past were those where people and buildings were in a certain balance with nature. But high-rise buildings work against nature, or, in modern terms, against the environment. High-rise buildings work against man himself, because they isolate him from others, and this isolation is an important factor in the rising crime rate. Children suffer even more because they lose their direct contacts with nature, and with other children. High-rise buildings work against society because they prevent the units of social importance — the family ... the neighborhood, etc. — from functioning as naturally and as normally as before. High-rise buildings work against networks of transportation, communication, and of utilities, since they lead to higher densities, to overloaded roads, to more extensive water supply systems — and, more importantly, because they form vertical networks which create many additional problems — crime being just one of them.”

Peter Blake condemned mega-towers on several points. One was the disastrous wind shear that their surfaces created; the other was fires that had burned out of control in two skyscrapers in Latin America. He warned the world that (Blake, 1974: page 150):

“The first alternative to Modern Dogma should obviously be a moratorium on high-rise construction. It is outrageous that towers more than a hundred stories high are being built at a time when no honest engineer and no honest architect, anywhere on earth, can say for certain what these structures will do to the environment — in terms of monumental congestion of services (including roads and mass-transit lines), in terms of wind currents at sidewalk level, in terms of surrounding water tables, in terms of fire hazards, in terms of various sorts of interior traumata, in terms of despoiling the neighborhoods, in terms of visually polluting the skylines of our cities, and in terms of

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endangering the lives of those within or without, through conceivable structural and related failures”.

We just saw two of the tallest buildings in the world burn and implode so that all their construction material (and contents — furniture plus people) was particulated and the residue compressed into the space of the underground parking garage. All of this happened on the order of minutes. Did no one read Blake’s warnings? Certainly many people did, but the persuasive force of the modernist architectural image of slick, shiny towers going all the way back to Le Corbusier’s first drawings in the 1920s was more seductive than practical realities and risks.

As of September 11, 2001 we cannot afford to be so complacent — or so easily entranced by the totems of “modernity”. Every would-be terrorist who is now a child will grow up and be instructed by those surreal, riveting images of the two airplanes crashing into the World Trade Towers.

3. A new urban life, and alternatives to mega-towers. The New Urbanism has some (though by no means all) solutions that could reintroduce

life into formerly dead urban environments. These ideas go back to several authors, including Christopher Alexander. In his book A Pattern Language (Alexander et. al., 1977) proposed with his co-authors 253 ‘patterns’ that describe how to satisfy human needs in the built environment, from the scale of a city, down to the scale of detailed construction in a room. Two of those patterns are relevant to our discussion:

Pattern 21: FOUR-STORY LIMIT. “There is abundant evidence to show that high buildings make people crazy. Therefore, in any urban area, no matter how dense, keep the majority of buildings four stories high or less. It is possible that certain buildings should exceed this limit, but they should never be buildings for human habitation”.

Pattern 62: HIGH PLACES. “The instinct to climb up to some high place, from which you can look down and survey your world, seems to be a fundamental human instinct. Therefore, build occasional high places as landmarks throughout the city. They can be a natural part of the topography, or towers, or part of the roofs of the highest local building — but, in any case, they should include a physical climb.”

We agree that the first of these ‘patterns’ might appear utopian and irrelevant to the industrialized world. However, our purpose is to reexamine the most basic aspects of urbanism, and in particular to look at those factors that have been destroyed by the megalomania of architects and the speculative greed of builders.

A city requires high buildings, but not all of them should be high, and they should certainly be of mixed use.

It is not possible to state with any certainty exactly what the optimum height of buildings ought to be, since buildings greater than ten storeys are an experimental product of industrial technology — itself an experiment for which the results are not yet in. We do know that the center cities of Paris, London and Rome achieved excellent density and variety at fewer than ten storeys, and have continued to thrive without succumbing to the extreme hypertrophy characteristic in American urbanism.

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Within the upper limits of proven traditional type, it might be prudent to confine future constructions to, perhaps, ten-story office buildings, whose four bottom storeys are strictly residential. Coexisting with the first type might be five-storey residential buildings with a commercial ground floor devoted to retail and restaurants. Both of these are a good compromise between traditional typologies, the ideal solutions proposed by Alexander, and the unfortunate, inhuman, alienating extant urbanisms that have been produced by modernist planning.

One of the most pressing commercial questions after the terrorist devastation of lower Manhattan is: where is the financial world going to find several million square feet of office space? The answer is right in front of our noses. Move into and renovate the numerous depressed areas just a few subway stops away. With the proper mixed zoning legislation that needs to protect residents and guarantee a thriving street life, this could mark the rejuvenation of parts of the city that for years have had the same bombed-out appearance as ‘ground zero’ of the Twin Towers has now (except that the slums are not shown on the evening news).

President Bill Clinton has set a shining example by moving his offices into Harlem.

Should the Twin Towers be rebuilt as a symbol of the defiance of the American people, as some sentimentalists have proposed in the aftermath of their collapse? We think not. If nothing else, it would be a disservice to humanity to rebuild proven deathtraps. Obsessively returning to the models of yesterday’s tomorrow would refute mankind’s past architectural achievements — and, curiously, would be a frightening parallel to the dogmatism that led the terrorists to do their mission.

4. It’s the fault of the architects. Why are the above solutions, all available for decades now, not implemented to

regenerate our cities? Several factors, including zoning, commercial speculation, and the tax structure created a favorable situation for erecting mega-towers. That era is now over. We conclude with a broad indictment of the architectural and building professions as responsible for destroying our cities, and for putting people at risk in firetraps from which they can never be evacuated in time. From Bernard Rudofsky (Rudofsky, 1969: page 339):

“Unlike physicians, today’s architects are not concerned with the general welfare; they are untroubled by scruples about strangling the cities and the misery that this entails. Architects never felt the urge to establish ethical precepts for the performance of their profession, as did the medical fraternity. No equivalent of the Hippocratic oath exists for them. Hippocrates’ promise that ‘the regiment I adopt shall be for the benefit of my patients according to my ability and judgement, and not for their hurt or for any wrong’ has no counterpart in their book. Criticism within the profession — the only conceivable way to spread a sense of responsibility among its members — is tabooed by their own codified standards of practice. To bolster their ego, architects hold their own beauty contests, award each other prizes, decorate each other with gold medals, and make light of the damning fact that they do not amount to any moral force in this country.”

Charles, the Prince of Wales spoke out courageously against mega-towers, and was

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consequently accused by architects and the media as being ‘against progress’. The reaction was so severe that for a while his succession to the throne was in question. It is worth recalling his remarks, which, through his choice of words, now seem eerily prophetic. In criticizing the then-unbuilt Canary Wharf tower in London, Charles said (Charles, Prince of Wales, 1989: page 55):

“What hope for London now? Cesar Pelli’s tower may become the tomb of modernistic dogma. The tragedy is that it will cast its shadow over generations of Londoners who have suffered enough from towers of architectural arrogance.”

Charles’s remarks were only one decade too early.

APPENDIX I: THE UNINSURABLE SKYSCRAPER (2007)

The French are again thinking of introducing skyscrapers into Paris, an idea vetoed by previous governments. Mounting commercial pressures, however, supported by enormous money interests and a propaganda campaign from the architectural establishment, cry out for expensive architectural icons. In an interview for the French scientific journal Sciences et Avenir (Chapter 8 of this book) I said that introducing skyscrapers would be “like dropping a bomb on Paris”.

Shortly after the September 11 tragedy, James Howard Kunstler and I wrote a very controversial essay for Planetizen, in which we predicted that this terrible event signaled the end of skyscrapers (Chapter 6). We argued the case against building skyscrapers as a utilitarian typology:

1. Skyscrapers are unsafe from fire, earthquake, and terrorist attacks, much more so than low-rise buildings.

2. They concentrate utilities and transportation nodes, and consequently choke the city at those points where they are planted.

3. They drive land prices up astronomically, thus destroying the commercial basis for living urban fabric, which has to maintain life on the HUMAN scales.

Powerful politicians are supporting the erection of skyscrapers, the taller the better, for entirely iconic reasons. Skyscrapers are still the cheap alternative for every country that does not want to spend the money or put in the real effort towards modernization: to improve its infrastructure, education, health care, and political systems. Naturally, architects find here a golden opportunity for vast profit, by offering companies, cities, and countries with an inferiority complex a means of achieving status by building the world’s tallest building.

While architects were promoting skyscrapers on aesthetic and ideological grounds, the insurance industry moved to make their erection more expensive and less feasible. Champions of skyscrapers have ignored this crucial development. A little-known paper by Johnson and Kasarda (Johnson & Kasarda, 2003) presented important developments

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summarized here: 1. General insurance premiums for business properties have increased by 2X to 10X

after 9/11. Most new policies have a terrorist exclusion provision. This affects new construction, since financing is contingent upon full insurance coverage. Companies are forced to self-insure, using up money that was formerly available for business investments and job creation.

2. Even when primary insurance can be covered, there is no backup from re-insurers, who no longer offer terrorism coverage. The US Federal Government had to step in to replace (but only in part) the role of re-insurers.

3. Increased security for high-rise office buildings has to be borne by the companies, which are responsible for common area maintenance costs. Increased security takes up valuable time in daily access to the building.

4. Firms are quietly relocating away from high-rise targets in metropolitan centers. One reason is that most high rises are not designed for mass evacuations. The same is true for highly visible public buildings. These added costs are reducing the attractiveness and competitiveness of large cities and metropolitan areas.

5. These effects will begin to be felt only after the end of 2004, when many long-term commercial real estate leases in place in 2001 have expired.

In the face of these hard assessments of the real-estate market, proposing new skyscrapers for cities makes no business sense. Developments such as the insurance and energy situations will eventually halt skyscraper construction.

Monstrous skyscrapers are elements of urban pathology. Nevertheless, I happen to admire the skyscraper typology from its glorious first days at the turn of the twentieth century, up to the last relatively modest Art Deco buildings in the 1920s (e.g., the Flatiron Building in New York City and others of its vintage, especially those by skyscraper pioneer Louis Sullivan). These and the later Art Deco buildings are among America’s greatest achievements: from 10 to 20 stories, quite thin footprint, and a meticulous attention to promoting life on the ground floor. Their base is integrated as much as possible into the urban fabric.

After that, their size became too large, and their humane design was abandoned for the alien and faceless modernist style. A monster skyscraper relies on a false conception of complexity. Large constructions such as a petrochemical plant bring together pieces that necessarily interact (chemical processes and pipes), because those connect with each other to perform a technological and industrial task. Every piece of the petrochemical plant is there to interact with every other piece. The modern skyscraper, by contrast, concentrates non-interacting parts. Offices don’t all interact with each other. They interact electronically with people outside that building. There’s absolutely no reason for all those people to be physically together.

Like a tree with leaves, the skyscraper you see sticking up hides an even bigger invisible “root” system down below. The skyscraper has to be fed with enormous energy and other resources. It’s ridiculously expensive, and eventually impoverishes the city. The taller the building gets, the more it needs to be supported systemically, so it parasitizes a vast surrounding area. Maintaining a skyscraper in an urban setting is akin to

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maintaining a space colony. The problem is supply and transportation. Trying to connect to the ground leads to extraordinary problems. There is a future for skyscrapers … as urban prisons. The security is excellent because it is supported by the geometry: vertical isolation, and no need to interact with real life on the ground.

Finally, skyscraper architects are offering us the same pie-in-the sky palliatives to the security aspect, trying to distract people’s attention with unproven space-age technological gimmicks. A fundamental law of engineering design is to work with the geometry, instead of against it. Fire safety must be judged by the number of storeys that an old woman can run DOWNSTAIRS. That is about equivalent to the number of storeys a fully-loaded and fit fireman can run UPSTAIRS. A comfortable height is around 7 plus or minus 2, a number that comes from cognitive psychology. One can stretch this by a few storeys, but not by many more.

APPENDIX II: SKYSCRAPERS HAVE A DESTRUCTIVE EFFECT ON THE CITY (2004)

Olivier Hertel interviews Nikos Salingaros.

Olivier Hertel: A few days after 11 September 2001, you announced the end of the

skyscraper era. Nevertheless, they are being constructed more actively than ever. What do you say about this?

Nikos Salingaros: It is an aberration. The concept of erecting utilitarian buildings of great height must be abandoned. It is a failed experiment. Those buildings are less secure against fire, earthquakes, and of course terrorist attacks than are buildings of smaller size. Does one have to pursue this typology simply to satisfy the architects’ ego?

OH: Are they really less secure? Safety now seems to be a central concern of all new skyscraper projects.

NS: That is admittedly true, but it does not change the fact that the more storeys there are, the greater the risks. In the event of fire, if evacuation is necessary, that becomes very problematic as soon as the building has more than ten storeys. Evidently, one can minimize this problem by using sophisticated fire protection systems. But one will never improve human performance in descending a staircase. As far as earthquakes are concerned, the higher the tower, the more it needs advanced and very expensive antiseismic systems.

OH: Don’t you believe that it is important for large companies to gather their employees on the same site?

NS: In the majority of cases, the people who work in a skyscraper don’t have any reason to be grouped together with all the others. They belong to different companies that have no relation to each other, nor any need for face-to-face contact among their

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respective employees. People in a skyscraper communicate primarily with people external to that building. It is the antithesis of a complex system in which all the elements interact among themselves. Take the case of a complex system like an oil refinery. One gathers together on the same site all the interacting elements necessary to obtain refined gasoline starting from crude petroleum.

OH: And as far as town planning, which is your specialty, what is the meaning and the essential place of the skyscraper?

NS: The skyscraper has a destructive effect because it needs to be “nourished”, and this imposes an over-concentration of services and transport in its vicinity. Wherever skyscrapers are planted, they choke the city. Moreover, they contribute to the skyrocketing of the price of land per square meter. If, by replacing an older building of six storeys — say, from Haussmann’s Paris — you could build a tower of one hundred storeys, then you will considerably multiply the price per square meter.

OH: It just so happens that, in connection with the buildings built under Baron Haussmann in Paris, the debate is heating up once again about the possibility of authorizing the construction of towers in the city. What do you think about it?

NS: It would be as if someone dropped a bomb on Paris. The urban fabric of this splendid city has kept a human dimension, but it has reached its maximum in terms of residential capacity, vehicular traffic, and the subways. If one promotes an over-concentration beyond this limit with the construction of skyscrapers, it turns into a catastrophe.

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CHAPTER SIX

THE END OF THE MODERN WORLD

By Michael W. Mehaffy and Nikos A. Salingaros

The Twentieth Century ushered in a historic era of optimism for the rational “modern” future of humanity. As the century fades into history, that modernist dream lies in pieces — but new outlines are emerging for a wiser, more hopeful future.

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1. Introduction. History may well record that the “modern” world ended on September 11, 2001. On

that day anti-modern extremists with medieval sensibilities launched a horrific attack upon a pinnacle symbol of twentieth-century modernity: the coolly rational towers of the World Trade Center, in New York City.

We now know that the organizer of that attack, Mohammed Atta, was a professional planner educated in Germany, and a skyscraper-hating anti-modernist. Atta personally flew the first plane into the north tower.

Atta was a religious fundamentalist of the most extreme sort, to be sure, along with Osama bin Laden and the Taliban regime. But clearly Atta felt more than a hatred of the west’s libertine ways. He hated the west’s hegemony in the third world, and he hated the western modernist buildings that he saw wiping out the traditional vitality of its cities. The thesis Atta wrote to get his master’s degree at Hamburg University was on the preservation of the ancient Syrian city of Aleppo, against the onslaught of western modernism. Six of the al Qaeda plotters that Atta led, later arrested in Spain, were from Aleppo.

2. Geometrical fundamentalism. The twin towers were the grand expression of Le Corbusier’s early twentieth-century

modernist vision: rigidly geometrical towers, floating above a superblock, erasing the “clutter” and complexity of the street and replacing it with a breathtakingly “pure” and rational geometry. That was the modernist program in its essence: an art of geometrical fundamentalism, a chilling echo of the terrorists’ own religious fundamentalism.

It may seem odd to call Le Corbusier a fundamentalist, but the term is apt. He was a utopian visionary with the most grandiose aspirations, willing to destroy almost anything in his way to build a new doctrinaire regime. With “modernist arrogance”, in Jane Ridley’s words, Le Corbusier proposed to bulldoze the streets and buildings of Paris and replace them with soldier-like rows of modern towers.

Parisians didn’t let him, thank goodness. But other cities weren’t so fortunate. Le Corbusier tried to convince successive French governments, including the collaborationist Vichy regime, to implement his plan of razing Algiers, the capital of Algeria and then a French colony. The plan was eventually realized after the war, coinciding with the anti-French resentment that precipitated Algerian independence — with long-term consequences that include the terrorist violence that continues to plague the country to this day.

In the boroughs of New York City, the regime of Commissioner Robert Moses saw dozens of neighborhoods razed and replaced by superblock “projects” that quickly degenerated into gangland slums.

Chicago, St. Louis, and other cities suffered similar fates. In New York, Moses’s reign was brought to an end almost single-handedly by the urban critic and activist Jane Jacobs, who argued convincingly for the vital complexity of the street and the neighborhood. (Unthinkably now, Moses had planned to raze a part of Greenwich Village.)

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But the third world (and indeed the second, for the “socialist” countries were unrepentantly modernist) continued to see more of these soldier-like “superblock” projects, with scores of brutal concrete boxes marching across the landscape and destroying the complexity of traditional neighborhoods in their paths. For many natives, these awful buildings came to symbolize the west’s colonial legacy and arrogant disregard for their indigenous culture.

3. Two utopian fantasies. Le Corbusier was the cofounder of the enormously influential Congrès Internationaux

d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM) in the 1920s, a movement that has shaped the architecture of modern sprawl to this day. Le Corbusier saw the new machine age as a final historic expression of the rational future of humanity — the physical form of seventeenth and eighteenth century Enlightenment, and the promise of the new century for a “modern” future beyond the ills of humanity. His unbridled optimism was echoed in the early century’s scientific projects to describe all of mathematics, and to crack all of the other secrets of nature.

The grand hope for providing a unified basis for all of mathematics was dashed by the monumental results of Kurt Gödel and Alan Turing. The parallel quest for a simplistic description of all of physics was in turn dashed by the discovery that the fundamental constituents of matter are in fact extraordinarily complex structures in their own right. Indeed, the most revolutionary scientific insight into how nature works has occurred in the interdisciplinary topic of complexity theory, which is the antithesis of the older search for a grand simplification.

Jane Jacobs reflected the later, more sober and more sophisticated view — one that grew in influence as late 20th century physics and mathematics were transformed by the lessons of uncertainty and incompleteness. Jacobs understood remarkably well the emerging lessons of the new “complexity science”, and she wrote eloquently of the disastrous folly of imposing simple abstractions on a natural setting. In 1961, as the grand modernist projects were still going up, her book The Death and Life of Great American Cities (Jacobs, 1961) argued for a more artful, more accommodating design methodology, respectful of the complexities of vernacular culture.

But still the bulldozers and the towers marched over the earth, spreading physical and spiritual desolation in equal amounts. In third world countries like Egypt, the despair and rage of people like Mohammed Atta grew in consequence. And in the wake of one visionary came another, to spin another utopian fantasy of a future with hope. His name was Osama bin Laden.

4. Abstract, in order to annihilate. No one should feel sorry for terrorists such as Atta; they are murderers, and not

sympathetic and sensitive figures. Nonetheless, they vividly demonstrate that twentieth-century urbanism unleashed intensely negative forces in society, precisely because it represents an assault on the mathematical qualities of life and organization.

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Everyone can feel those forces. Different people react variously with a numbing retreat into palliatives such as drugs; perversions; violence; the isolation of the suburbs; the superficiality of contemporary societal relations; and the like. A wily demagogue, however, can channel these forces to power his own fanatical movement and deluded followers. It is thus essential to stop those forces from being generated in the first place.

In a recent essay entitled The Janus Face of Architectural Terrorism, author Eric Darton argues that the mindset of those who conceive and build huge, inhuman, faceless structures differs little from those who would wish to destroy them (Darton, 2001). Both creator and destroyer are obsessed with images of abstraction divorced from human content.

Abstraction creates a dangerous dehumanization. Darton already raised this frightening prospect in his prescient book on the World Trade Center, Divided We Stand: A Biography of New York’s World Trade Center (Darton, 2000). His reasoning is as follows. It is impossible to contemplate killing thousands of people in a single building unless those people are viewed simply as an abstract class. They have no separate existence apart from the building’s geometry, which is itself defined abstractly. The geometry of monumental, monofunctional office towers makes it difficult to imagine that they are full of people, hence it becomes possible and even rational to contemplate their destruction.

Historians of the Holocaust have identified abstraction as a necessary precondition for genocide, and the phenomenon is easy to recognize in other atrocities before and since the Second World War. The prelude to mass slaughter is an abstraction of the victim group — as a class it is stripped of its humanity and declared to be foreign to the perpetrators.

If the atrocities are state-directed, as is so often the case, then an official propaganda campaign removes any traces of individual existence from the class. It is forbidden to mention individual human beings, but only the victim class as a whole. Only via this abstraction can the rest of the perpetrator population be turned into accomplices for the horrible deeds.

From these conclusions, we gain a better insight of the dichotomy between reductive abstractions on the one hand, and a respect for complex systems on the other. The first is the enemy of the second. Any philosophy that eliminates the individual human being from consideration merits an automatic commonality with destructive events such as the Holocaust. This is a mathematical similarity: when the smaller scales of a complex system are eliminated, the system is destroyed. Geometrical fundamentalism in architecture belongs to this type of essentially destructive ideology.

5. From the modern to the complex. And so we are left with a world after the modern towers, and after modernism. We will

surely destroy al Qaeda and the Taliban. But even more important, we need to destroy the festering conditions in which men like these are made. To do that, we will have to reexamine the kind of modern world we have imposed upon the planet — economic,

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technological, and artistic. We will have to reexamine, and rebuild, the decaying foundations of our own modern culture.

The very word “modern” carries a hidden negative attachment, by creating a false dichotomy of values: if modern is good, then all that came before it must now be bad. It is just one philosophical step further to throw away the accumulated value of millennia of civilization in the pursuit of a false utopian promise of progress.

The alternative, however, is emphatically not a nostalgic looking-back to the past. It is an application of the evolutionary principles that have produced us: advantageous adaptations are built on top of existing structures. Evolution has no “eraser”; it is natural catastrophes that cause discontinuities of the fossil record.

Throughout history, innovation takes place in a complex spatio-temporal pattern. If we are to survive as a species, we must be open to change while not losing what we already have. The technological success stories of our times resulted from adapting old ideas to new uses, combining them into a complex brew that catalyzed new ideas with an empowerment of the individual. Information and communications technology is not a monolithic modernist structure, but instead a connecting network that links persons in a complex society.

This lesson is not obvious. There is a tragic disconnect between two opposite points of view. What the World Trade Center towers’ architect Minoru Yamasaki thought was a “symbol of peace” was for others a symbol of war — a war of occupation and extermination of traditional architectural and social values by what they regard as overwhelmingly powerful forces of global imperialism.

6. The modern world after modernism. The crisis forces us to examine, and to fight for, what is most important about our

legacy: democratic equality, open society, tolerance, freedom and self-determination. As we fight to secure these conditions for ourselves, we must be willing to secure them for others who seek them as well. In an age of nuclear and biological terror, we no longer have a choice.

As we fight for the rights of others, we must honor their right to their own traditions, and their right to protect their world from the rapacious effects of misguided technology. Science is the understanding of nature, whereas technology is the application of what we have learned. That application can be either constructive or destructive, so it is foolish to trust in technology without the guiding hand of a wisdom gained through experience and reflection.

We can hope that this crisis may catalyze a new era in history, in which science and technology learn to better support the richness of traditional culture and the natural world. Then traditional cultures around the world may be more willing to join our call for a new age of tolerance and coexistence, cooperation on mutual threats to survival, and human progress for all.

That kind of modern world just might survive modernism.

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CHAPTER SEVEN

THE FUTURE OF CITIES: THE ABSURDITY OF MODERNISM.

Nikos Salingaros interviews Léon Krier.

Comment by James Howard Kunstler, from a review of Léon Krier’s book

Architecture: Choice or Fate (Krier, 1998). “Léon Krier may be best known ... as the intellectual godfather of the New Urbanism

movement in America, a campaign to rescue the landscape, townscape and civic life of our nation from the failed experiment of a drive-in utopia. Krier [is] a Luxemburgois who lived in London for twenty years and now makes his home in southern France. He brings an exhilarating clarity to issues of place-making and architecture that have been otherwise subject to a remorseless obscurantism by a colorful cast of self-promoting avant-gardist charlatans ranging from Le Corbusier in the 1920s to Peter Eisenman in our time ... Among the other putative leading figures in international architecture, Krier’s work is the most comprehensive and intelligent.”

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1. Tall buildings. Nikos Salingaros: With the recent tragic events of September 11, 2001, do you think

that our civilization needs to change direction in its thinking about urbanism? Does the perceived unease in inhabiting tall buildings also indicate a crisis with modernist architecture in general?

Léon Krier: The tragic events of September 11 affect our general perception and thinking about tall or low buildings for both psychological and practical reasons. Assuming that the Pentagon and one of the World Trade Center towers had a similar floor area (roughly 5 million square feet), we can compare the relative damage done to one or the other by the same explosive charge. It is evident that were are dealing with events of a fundamentally different order [approximately 200 versus 2000 casualties]. Let’s imagine that the Pentagon establishment had been housed in a single tall rather than a low building, and reflect on the potential damage that could be done to the entire U.S. defense system by one civilian aeroplane. Conversely, let us assume that the World Trade Center had been housed in 4-storey-high traditional building blocks and reflect on the question: How many aeroplanes would have been needed to cause the destruction of its compounded floor area? I guess the number to be around 160 aeroplanes of Boeing 737 size, instead of 2.

The tragic absurdity of the World Trade Center is that a very poor piece of architecture (of insignificant quality) has become an involuntary martyr, a phantom tombstone of monstrous scale. A fake architectural monument (i.e. private economic activities dressed in a monumental garb, and housed in memorial pillars, totems and the like) has become a true memorial only through its disappearance. By its bodily dissolution it has gained the (immortal) soul that had so far eluded it.

There are lots of good reasons to build high symbolic structures, such as the Washington Memorial, the Capitol Building, the Eiffel Tower, St. Paul’s Cathedral; there exists no sound reason, however, for building excessively high utilitarian buildings (with the exception of financial gain). Their collateral damage is such that society cannot afford such absurdities as general propositions; the problem today is not so much that they exist, but that some architectural ideologues want to make us believe that the construction of such buildings is inevitable and necessary even in the future. Evidently, those buildings make a very large impact as sex and power symbols, and from a semantic point of view they are symbols of shallowness and minimal value. In fact, considering the very real damage they do to their host cities, users, and neighbors, they may not only be considered now to be toxic, fragile, and dangerous, but also obscene rather than powerful.

2. Skyscrapers as an experimental typology. NS: How far and on what points do you agree with James Howard Kunstler and myself

that “the era of skyscrapers is at an end”; that it is “an experimental building typology that has failed”? Are there any issues raised in our paper entitled “The End of Tall Buildings” with which you disagree?

LK: I would rather reformulate your quote as “the era of the utilitarian skyscraper is at an end”. It’s not the metric height but the excessive number of inhabited floors that

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causes systemic problems. Applied science and technology undertake mechanical and typological experiments in controlled conditions. They don’t fly civilian passengers in experimental planes: nevertheless, metaphorically that is exactly what modernist architects have been doing for three generations; they literally build buildings that are not ready for common use.

3. False steps and ideology. NS: Has humanity, as you claim in your writings and talks, made a fundamentally false

step in building its cities, and if so, what can be done about it now? LK: Humanity lives by trial and error, sometimes committing errors of monumental

scale. Architectural and urbanist modernism belong — like communism — to a class of errors from which there is little or nothing to learn or gain from a disciplinary point of view. They are ideologies that literally blind even the most intelligent and sensitive people to unacceptable wastes, risks, and dangers. Modernism’s fundamental error, however, is to propose itself as a universal and exclusive (i.e. unavoidable and necessary) phenomenon, which needs to legitimately replace and exclude all traditional solutions. Thank God there are, through the applications of New Urbanism in the last 20 years, enough positive experiences worldwide to see a massive return to common-sense solutions.

4. New Urbanism. NS: Many of the leading new urbanists look to you for inspiration. What are your

suggestions for the future of cities if the world can be convinced to build in a New Urbanist context?

LK: There already exist excellent New Urbanist models for living in new small and medium size towns. Some higher density projects are only recently being completed, but they don’t get the media attention they deserve (certainly not comparable to the publicity hype created around neo-modernist projects such as the Guggenheim, etc.), so the learning process is slower than it could be. Despite the lack of publicity, however, these projects have a notable economic success; their basic idea is winning.

Very great sums of public money are being invested now to renovate 1950s and 1960s modernist estates and campuses, but many of these are no more than the artificial prolongation of failed experiments of social and architectural collectivism. New Urbanism is not utopian and does not impose socio-political master plans. Instead, it allows the infinite variety of human talent and ambition to build harmonious and pleasing environments. It channels competitive forces to flourish as good neighbors while permitting everyone to pursue their own aspirations. The very great challenge of the immediate future, however, will be the urbanization of suburbia, the redevelopment of sprawl.

The theoretical models are ready, but their application is slow. What is now already certain is that even the most soulless dumps on earth can — with the right ideas and people, and sometimes very modest means — be turned around to become places of

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beauty and human thriving. NS: There remains a serious misunderstanding. Planners — and more importantly,

citizens in general, including those elected representatives in a position to make decisions — don’t realize that the solutions you propose apply to all cities, irrespective of style. Urban structure obeys scientific rules that are independent of region. There is a secondary dependence on local tradition, climate, resources, and materials, but these differences have long been erased with the uniform modernist approach. Current planning practice creates two separate and artificial images of urban form: traditional, Classical and historic centers on the one hand; and vital, dynamic, growing urban fabric on the other.

Within this mind-set, the governing body of a city comes to you only when it wants to revitalize itself in a Neo-traditionalist manner. My question is thus the following: have the New Urbanists, in carving out a niche for themselves, helped to isolate New Urbanism from mainstream planning? How can this be corrected, and how do you convince the profession that New Urbanism does not impose stylistic limits?

LK: You are absolutely right to point out that urban structure, as a set of organizational principles, is largely independent of questions of style. Many New Urbanist projects are done using buildings in traditional style (in general based upon a local vernacular) because that is the way that we prefer them to be done; at least for the time being. Modernist architecture is generally arbitrary and of such poor quality that it is almost totally inappropriate for most common uses and specific climates. The most successful and well-publicized New Urbanist projects are of course the neo-traditional ones like Seaside, Celebration, and Poundbury. Nevertheless, there are plenty of similar schemes based on the principles of New Urbanism, but realized using neo-modernist architecture in Holland, Denmark, and Germany: they generate an atrocious sadness, they are architectural no-man’s land — and consequently remain unknown. They make only architects dreamy-eyed.

I personally resist for the moment mixing traditional and modernist architecture. First, they are experiments already performed and failed. Second, judging from experience, one modernist building is enough to destroy the spirit even of a largely traditional scheme. The Steven Holl building in Seaside may be the best example of this. Nobody is happy with the result; neither the modernists, nor the residents, nor even us.

Modernists seem up to now to be so disorganized in their ideas that they are quite unable to realize anything so coherent and complex as Windsor or Poundbury. The situation is so critical that Andrés Duany and I have discussed for a while the necessity of designing a town in modernist style, simply to show that it’s not impossible, and to show them how it is done. A town “design code” could for example easily limit itself to Le Corbusier’s 1920s or 1950s grammar and produce a meaningful townscape that is coherent and harmonious, based on common sense and comprehensible to the great majority of users. The same could be done with Frank Lloyd Wright — or even Zaha Hahid or Oscar Niemeyer idioms.

New Urbanists are at any rate not philosophically limited to traditional architecture, and yet a lot of architects spend sleepless nights and are torn between old and new allegiances. But I would say that this is not a transcendental or moral issue, but a

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technological choice. In the end, every one should do in this area what he or she feels is right for the situation, the geography, the society, the economy … and if one is not sure, experiment around a little if the client is prepared to take the risk and then make a lucid choice. However, if you are faced with a political situation of common complexity I would always recommend a local vernacular as the basic architecture, because it moves design issues away from the arbitrary and from the intellectual terror of modernist moralism. This choice reduces stylistic and architectural errors to the level of the bearable and away from spectacular errors so common to modernist experiments.

Traditional detailing and architectural elements generally have to do with the willingness of resolving practical problems of building in a logical and elegant way, whereas style in general has to represent something more: really the aesthetic quality with which you master what are technological issues. What we have to point out to dogmatic modernists again and again is that, in democracies, even architecture and urbanism are a matter of choice, and are not metaphysical constraints or absolutes of their own making. Those who don’t accept choice in these matters are ultimately anti-democratic, totalitarian, and possibly un-modern, however futuristic their buildings may look.

5. Scarcity of land. NS: Architects trained in the modernist tradition of our schools do not share the same

reverence for your ideas as do New Urbanists. They argue that you neglect the serious population pressures that force high-rise buildings on the third world, and commercial pressures that do the same in downtowns the world over. Can you respond to such criticisms?

LK: There is strictly speaking no correlation between demographic pressure and high-rise buildings (with the rare exception of the type of conditions found in Hong Kong and Monte Carlo). In the U.S. or Europe the “scarcity of land” argument is promoted and maintained by people with a variety of contrasting agendas, reaching from those of landowners to those of ecologists. It is an artificially fabricated myth, which dissolves into thin air when we look down onto those continents from the air.

We will then realize that our towns and landscapes do not suffer so much from a scarcity of land or generalized road and building congestion, but rather from badly divided lots and badly used land, hence from a politics of weak planning. For instance, while Paris doubled its population during the second part of the 20th century, it spread its buildings over a territory 15 times that of central Paris, despite the proliferation of utilitarian high-rise buildings.

6. Market forces. NS: The built environment is created by market forces, speculative greed, zoning

legislation, etc. Is it even possible to build a humane environment within these unfortunately real restrictions?

LK: Market forces are vectors of human energies and enterprise. No city can be built without them. Planning laws have often had the objective of strangling such activities

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rather than letting them flourish. The motive was a mixture of politics and moralism: the idea was to replace an unpredictable and chaotic activity with political direction, in general tied to a utopian project driven by politico-moral ambitions.

New Urbanist principles are not motivated by transcendental schemes. They have the simplicity and practicality of moral precepts rather than the tyrannical sophistications of utopian reform. They are not so much prescriptive as they are permissive. In that perspective, the common interest, expressed in the form of public spaces, is the product of neighbors knowing how to bring together and realize their contrasting and variegated self-interests.

7. The electronic city. NS: I would like to know your thoughts on the developing network city, which

incorporates telecommuting and information technology. Have you thought about how this will affect urban morphology?

LK: The network of traditional patterns of streets and squares is the optimal means of developing pieces of real estate of whatever size. It is no accident that many symbols from the computer screen originate in traditional urbanism: the site; the homepage; the portal; the window; etc. Electronic networking completes spatial networks of streets and public spaces; not by competing with them, and, in fact, it cannot replace them. To believe the latter is a philosophical error of the same degree as believing that the wheel could replace the leg.

8. Building typologies. NS: The pressing issue is the following: does the increasing development of electronic

networking have spatial consequences? The information revolution is generating enormous social and commercial forces, so in which direction will those forces act? Does the network city push the urban fabric towards a modernist typology, or a traditional typology; or does it do neither?

LK: New types of building are generated by new kinds of use. For instance it is the aeroplane that caused airports to be developed as a building type, not the reverse. New building types however may generate uses for which they were not intended, like Roman market-halls (basilicas) becoming Christian churches, or airports being used as shopping malls, etc. It is not the urge for creative innovation that brings about new building types; yet this continues to be a widely diffused modernist phantom.

Typological innovations based on such utopian ideologies are generally short lived. Strictly speaking, there is no “modernist” typology ... for the simple reason that any type of building which becomes established as a recognizable and reproducible type becomes ipso facto traditional; be it a discotheque, an oil drilling platform, a cooling tower, an office building, or a house.

There are, however, building types which are the result of excessive concentrations of uses of one kind under one roof; these are typological aberrations which can be built in any style or using any form of construction. The utilitarian skyscraper and groundscraper

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(an enormous low-lying horizontal building covering a large area) are such typological hypertrophies. They are generally involuntary and unreflected outcomes of financial or political mechanisms, and are not uniquely related to modernism. We can define them as useless and paradoxical mega-structures. Building a city solely out of such mega-structures is a nightmare, because they are profoundly dysfunctional, and therefore inhuman, antisocial, and anti-urban.

We could for instance build a city based on traditional building types and street patterns but entirely designed in a modernist architectural style. It may even be pleasing and successful on aesthetic and social terms, and many users may be very happy to live there. If it is robust and adapts to the climate and topography, I see no metaphysical reason not to build it. However, a city built entirely of ground- and sky-scrapers — even if built using traditional building materials and methods, and designed in traditional styles — may be pleasing to look at but would in the end alienate human relations and lives as radically, if less cruelly, than its modernist counterpart.

To sum up the argument: there is strictly speaking no “modernist typology” but modernism has been remarkably proficient in typological aberrations.

9. Philosophy. NS: There is a profound loss of reverence for human sensibilities — the building

tradition which produced even modest, pleasing structures has vanished. How can a world without deep values regain such a philosophy?

LK: Traditional architecture and urbanism is not an ideology, religion, or transcendental system. It cannot save lost souls or give meaning to empty lives. It is primarily part of technology rather than style or art. It is a body of knowledge and know-how allowing us to build practically, aesthetically, socially, and economically satisfying cities and structures in the most diverse climatic, cultural, and economic situations. Such structures do not ensure happiness, but they certainly facilitate the pursuit of individual or collective happiness for a large majority of people.

10. The effects of modernism. NS: Certain spatial structures having particular mathematical qualities provide

positive sensory feedback to an observer. Mankind has built these, from the scale of cities, down to the scale of artifacts, so as to give meaning to the environment. I don’t refer to meaning in one’s life, but to meaning in one’s surroundings that is contained in cognitively accessible complexity. A wholesale removal of meaning was perpetrated by the modernists in pursuit of their agenda. How could this have happened when it goes against our physiological make-up?

LK: Modernism is a totalitarian ideology that, like all dogmatisms, is based on unprovable assumptions. Until now it was unable to tolerate, let alone accept opposition, contradiction, or refusal. If you accept such fantastic assumptions you necessarily abandon your own cognitive capacities and blind yourself to overwhelming evidence, in spite of interior and exterior contradictions.

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Modernism’s declaration of war against tradition was not just a rejection of obsolete traditions, but it included all knowledge and know-how that does not fit its reductive vision of humanity, history, technology, politics, and economy. It represents a systematic rape of man’s psychological and physiological make-up. It therefore took at least three generations to recover from a mental rape that goes against human experience, against accumulated human intelligence, instinct, and sensibility.

NS: Modernism has replaced the means that human beings use to connect to each other, and to external structures. The city as a framework for establishing connections among members of an urban population has been changed to a spatial structure whose aim is to disconnect. This applies both to path connectivity — people easily walking to meet one-another face-to-face — and also to visual connectivity between an individual and the built components of the city.

My investigations reveal that a city is a system of systems — with a logical architecture (in the sense of computer architecture) that is far closer to the human brain than to existing electronic computers. Cutting connections, as the modernists have done, is akin to cutting the wiring in a computer or the neurons in the brain. After decades of psychological conditioning to a sterile world, people have accepted disconnectedness as a way of life. We therefore have to ask ourselves: are human beings changed so they are no longer capable of valuing spatial structures that satisfy basic sensory and social needs?

LK: Your question contains the answer. Modernism operates through various forms of alienation, incapacitating people’s autonomy, and thus their ability to act, work, and think individually. It is a form of radical brainwashing from which very few, once they have experienced it, are able to escape. Millions have fallen victim to its powerful lure (fascinating and tyrannical at the same time), yet it is as if nature with each new generation was producing antidotes for such massive ideological aberrations of the past; that at least is my hope.

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