Reviews » Archives » 2009

“At its core, public housing, as conceived by reformers in 1937, was a blueprint for disaster and could not have survived the postwar housing boom without fundamental changes. The need for these changes was actually recognized early on, but they were never seriously pursued. The crime was therefore not the effort to better house the poor but the failure by those in power to alter course and to fix evident mistakes. Leadership at all governmental levels abandoned its poverty-stricken residents in public housing — nowhere more than in Chicago.” {13}

“Rather than bemoan the loss of Main Street and condemn strip commercial areas, then, one would do well to see them as part of the rich visual variety of the American landscape today — a variety that reflects how much America has changed in the twentieth century. … if current preservation trends continue, Americans may find themselves anxiously preserving threatened shopping strips in, say, the year 2050, when these places too become ‘historic.’ After all, in the early 1950s, on the eve of Disney’s rediscovery of late-Victorian architecture, the buildings of the 1900 era were considered so much obsolete garish rubble by many Americans.” {8, 15}

“No state did well on all smart growth principles.” But Indiana isn’t even trying.

“What if your client (or boss or colleague) came to you one day and said, ’Let’s build a green building!’ Where would you start? You might have to spend weeks on research to figure out what this ‘green building’ concept is all about. Instead, LEED has taken that big first step, developing a method that walks users of the rating system through a series of user-friendly categories and credits to create a green building.” {8, 15}

Why are so few of the great green ideas of Amory Lovins and Stewart Brand (How Buildings Learn) ever implemented? In part, because the building process is too specialized, too dominated by habit, and too hasty. The authors of The Integrative Design Guide to Green Building know this process intimately, and they explain how to redesign it in order to build much greener buildings. Their advice is convincingly backed up by their frankness and their stories. They don’t duck or minimize the fact that most people involved in the process are comfortable with the status quo, and have lots of reasons to resist leaving their “silos” and entering into the necessary close and cooperative relationships with other specialists. The only fault I can find with this book is that it doesn’t have the killer title it deserves to set it apart from the herd.

“Only when transit passengers exit with some reluctance can transit truly compete against the automobile. . . . What are the physical, designable qualities of particular transit systems that promote positive transportation experiences?” {8, 15}

“The effect of cul-de-sacs has been like a corset. It changes appearance. The wearer, or resident, feels better superficially, but the underlying condition and danger remains. Perhaps the danger (traffic or excess weight) is worse because of a false feeling of being in control.” {248}

“All the fancy economic development strategies, such as developing a biomedical cluster, an aerospace cluster, or whatever the current economic development ‘flavor of the month’ might be, do not hold a candle to the power of a great walkable urban place.” {170}

“Public health and environmental protection are vital and noble ethics for the built environment, but they are not enough to ensure that our communities are socially responsible to their citizenry.” — Barbara B. Wilson {31}

“The best new streets need not be the same as the old, but as models the old have much to teach. Delightful, purposeful streets and cities will surely follow.” {314}

“The architecture profession [has] largely overlooked the needs of the average aspiring homeowner.” {25}

“Despite its mundane purpose, modest size, and utilitarian appearance, the filling station was a revolutionary work that gave birth to the drive-in concept, whereby providing space for cars became the principal determinant of the setting, configuration, and sometimes even the internal layout of the facility” — and, eventually, the city as well. {211}

“The twentieth century, both in Europe and North America, has a poor record of successful new public spaces. Most seem to have been intended to dramatize surrounding buildings rather than support social life on the square. They are often geometric works of art best appreciated in their original form, as drawings.” {211}

“As urban designers we must work as surgeons or auto mechanics and repair the diverse broken parts of the city rather than trying to manufacture a completely new, self-sufficient, conflict-free urban machine. We must reorient our thinking toward centralization rather than dispersion, integration rather than segregation, and urban space that expresses its setting rather than superimposing order from outside.” {230}

From Levittown to regional malls and edge cities, “Many suburban areas are evolving into places that are more urban and, we think, more urbane.” {vi} Experienced architects explain how it’s happening, and wrestle with the ambiguous status of places that have become less suburban but are not — yet? — authentically urban.

“The design of buildings, neighborhoods, cities, and regions should not be dictated by doctrine of any persuasion but should be genuinely concerned with the conditions of all human beings, or as many as possible. …When I consider the question of how places, over time, grow toward greater livability and vitality, it is through transformations according to principles that have a basis in the existing city structure and in natural processes.” {xv}