The New York Times, June 2, 1996, A&E, p. 27.
Architecture View / Herbert Muschamp
Can New Urbanism Find Room for the Old?
The Congress for the New Urbanism is the most important
phenomenon to emerge in American architecture in the
post-Cold War era. As the only organized nationwide
movement of consequence initiated by baby-boom architects,
the new urbanists challenge the conventional view that
members of this individualistic generation are incapable of
collective action.
But the organization is now at a crossroads. Founded in
1993, it has devoted itself single-mindedly to promoting
suburban developments like Seaside, Fla. the
"neotraditional" resort planned in the i980's by Andres
Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk two founders of the new
urbanism. Last month, however, the group took a major step
toward expanding its agenda to include saving America's
aging central cities. Convening in Charleston, S.C., the
new urbanists signed a charter that began by opposing
"disinvestment" in the central cities by banks and business
interests and went on to affirm "the restoration of
existing urban centers and towns."
This shift in part reflects major changes in leadership of
the congress. Charleston was the final conference organized
by the founding members. In the past year, the group has
added new board members with a demonstrated commitment to
revitalizing the central city. The shift also reflects the
desire of many of the organization's 1,600 members to live
up to its name. The question now facing the membership is
whether its admirable solidarity can survive this important
enlargement of its scope.
Founded by Mr. Duany and Ms. Plater-Zyberk, Peter
Calthorpe, Elizabeth Moule and Stefanos Polyzoides and Dan
Solomon, the Congress for the New Urbanism started out with
an appealingly simple idea. Persuade builders to model new
suburban developments on the compact scale of small towns.
Increase the density of residential development. Place
shops, schools and recreation within walking distance of
houses. Orient plans toward pedestrians and public
transportation. Design guidelines that draw on traditional
ways to humanize and animate the street: porches, stoops,
balconies.
Although the new urbanists have been brutally dismissive of
the modern movement, the congress was in fact modeled after
the Congres International de l'Architecture Moderne, which
was primarily responsible for creating modernism's
solidarity. Many architects outside the new urbanist
organization are offended by this appropriation. How dare
the Congress for the New Urbanism claim the legacy of a
movement for which they have only contempt? But in a
crucial respect, they've earned the right to make that
claim. Like the modernist congress, the new urbanists are
concerned with the pragmatics of building. Le Corbusier,
the modernist organization's leading guru, designed as his
personal symbol a device he called "The Open Hand." An
upraised palm, with fingers spread, the image stood for
humanity's mastery of tools. And the Congress for the New
Urbanism has been nothing less than masterly in its use of
the tools available to architects today. The schools; the
news me,dia; elected officials; public policy makers: the
Congress for the New Urbanism has cemented working
relationships with virtually every sector that affects the
art and business of building.
Boomer architects often complain that their profession has
been marginalized, but clearly that is not true of
architects associated with the Congress for the New
Urbanism. According to the organization, more than a
hundred developments nationwide designed by affiliated
architects have been completed or are now under way.
But tne new urbanists emulate the modernist congress in
less agreeable ways as well. Like the modernists, the new
urbanists rely too much on esthetic solutions to the social
problems created by urban sprawl. For instance, the
urbanist group inflates the ecological advantages of its
plans. True, a compact development that reduces dependence
on the car could be less environmentally damaging than a
sprawling subdivision. On the other hand, compact
developments could simply make room for even more compact
developments. Many environmentalists believe that the
soundest way to reconfigure suburban development is to
mcrease the density of existing postwar suburbs. The newer,
third-ring suburbs tend to regard undeveloped land in much
the same way that modernists saw the city: as a blank slate
for their visions.
The Congress for the New Urbanism also oversells the
capacity of its designs to foster a strong sense of
community. Clearly if you increase density, you bring
people mto closer physical proximity. But as life in any
City makes painfully clear, it is by no means certain that
proximity guarantees social cohesion or even social
contact. It's not only lawns and driveways that atomize
suburban life. The economic exclusivity of the suburbs is
being turned against its own progeny as a new generation
grows up in affluent neighborhoods with the gnawing
suspicion that they won't be rich enough to live in them.
(It is another argument for "retrofitting" older suburbs
with varied housing types.)
Modern architects created machine-age images of "rational"
cities that, when actually built often functioned
miserably. The new urbanists may be producing architecture
for the Prozac age: Potemkin villages for dysfunctional
families.
Curiously, the most socially far-reaching discussion at the
Charleston conference was provoked by an esthetic issue. A
skirmish broke out over the attempt to include in the
charter a phrase that appeared to slight architects who
"mimic historic forms." Like the charter's embrace of the
central city, the phrase represented a departure from the
"neotraditional" esthetic actively promoted by the Congress
for the New Urbanism. Clearly intended as a response to
critics who consider this a reactionary esthetic, the
phrase so irked the keynote speaker, Leon Krier, the
architect and adviser to the Prince of Wales, that he
refused to sign the document.
The dispute involved more than style. The phrase recognized
that it is laughable to talk of urbanism without an
appreciation of the city's diversity and its historic role
as the matrix of experiment and innovation. And the
argument over its inclusion helped clarify an important
point: tradition is not history. It is a mythology, a
belief that, in a world of accelerating change, not
everything solid must melt into air.
Myth-making is a perfectly legitimate function of
architecture, of course, and the Congress for the New
Urbanism has performed this function with notable success.
Mythology aside, however, the new urbanism is also part of
history, and what was most disturbing about the Charleston
conference was the group's limited grasp of the history of
suburban culture.
Throughout the weekend, I kept thinking back to "World War
II and the American Dream," a superlative show presented
last year at the National Building Museum in Washington.
Organized by Donald Albrecht, the show traced the origins
of postwar suburbia to the armaments industry developed
during World War II. Just as the war helped lift the United
States out of the Depression, so the prosperity of the
postwar years was sustained by converting the armaments
industry into a machine for mass-producing suburbia. Cars
and highways, steel and asphalt, concrete and oil: suburbia
was the continuation of World War II by other means. But
its chief casualty was the central city. The modern
movement's destructive impact on the urban center pales
beside the erosion created by suburban development.
The architects of the new urbanism are, for the most part,
the children of that development. And they have put
together a powerful organization that could help reverse
its impact. It would be heartening to think that the group
will pursue the new direction taken by its charter.
Otherwise, the "new urbanism" could turn out to be little
more than another assault on the old.
[Two photos] Two projects modeled on the compact scale of
small-town life, embody new urbanist ideas of Duany and
Plater-Zyberk and Peter Calthorpe: above, the Windsor
development in Vero Beach, Fla.; left, a row of porches at
Laguna West, Sacramento, Calif.
[End]
To see b/w photos:
http://pwp.usa.pipeline.com/~jya/nurb01.jpg
http://pwp.usa.pipeline.com/~jya/nurb02.jpg
