The prominent role of new urbanists and CNU in planning the recovery of hurricane-damaged communities in Mississippi and Louisiana has brought widespread attention to New Urbanism since last August, some of it hostile. “The New Urbanism has become the ‘go-to’ organization,” said Andres Duany. “Now we’re under scrutiny and under attack.”
San Francisco architect Dan Solomon said there has been “a new barrage of hostility from our own colleagues,” some of it prompted by the affinity of many new urbanists for historic architectural styles — styles considered irrelevant or “sentimental” by many contemporary or avant-garde architects. “I think it is not so smart to dismiss it as ‘their’ problem” rather than as a problem for New Urbanism, he said.
CNU Chair Hank Dittmar said the organization has decided to launch “a proactive communications program” rather than mainly responding to what others say or write. The program will “shape broader messages about New Urbanism” and will tell about New Urbanism’s connection to the environment. CNU also intends to “view some key issues through regionalism,” he said.
Style debates erupted periodically during the congress. Larry Beasley, co-director of planning for Vancouver, British Columbia, said designers in his city are not much interested in traditional styles. Sleek, glassy “point towers” are proliferating downtown, providing quite a bit of the new housing in the city’s center. Leon Krier, the Luxembourg-born architect and theorist, disdained tall Modern buildings, and exclaimed during one session, “CNU doesn’t need Vancouver, and Vancouver doesn’t need CNU.”
In a session titled “Can New Urbanism capture the market for Modernism?,” Ellen Dunham-Jones, director of the architecture program at Georgia Tech, conceded that “there are plenty of Modern buildings that have misbehaved,” but added, “There are plenty of traditional buildings that behave badly.” She argued that Modern buildings — or ‘contemporary’ buildings, as she prefers to call them — “can hold the street edge” and do other things that new urbanists consider important. She contended that although “villages work in a single style,” cities need diversity — “multiple neighborhoods, multiple communities, and multiple expressions.”
Jeff Speck, director of design for the National Endowment for the Arts, remained skeptical of Dunham-Jones’s position, replying, “When every dog is barking, it’s a cacophony” — even more of a cacophony when every dog is barking “in a different pitch.” Despite the sales success of contemporary houses in Kiki Wallace’s new urban Prospect development in Longmont, Colorado, some in the audience insisted that there’s a problem when contemporary architects make buildings that contrast against their neighbors.
CERTIFICATION AND ENDORSEMENTS
After numerous discussions in recent years about whether and how to certify projects, plans, or practitioners, “CNU has decided we are not the certifying organization,” Dittmar announced. Instead, he said, “This is an opportunity to collaborate with others.” Part of that opportunity lies in the LEED-ND (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design — Neighborhood Development) program, which will be tested in various locales before being made generally available.
Geoffrey Anderson of the US Environmental Protection Agency said supporters of smart growth so far “haven’t moved fast enough in endorsing good projects.” He said swifter endorsement will help good projects win approvals, which are often hard to get.
Although smart growth has suffered some political setbacks, Anderson said many organizations that had previously focused on a single aim (such as the environment) recently “have embraced smart growth” and “are recognizing smart-growth projects.” Speck noted a welcome shift in the Urban Land Institute’s attitude toward New Urbanism and smart growth in the past six years. “What was a tendency at ULI has become much more of a commitment,” Speck said.
Lynne Barker, who works in planning for the City of Seattle, suggested that the US Mayors Climate Protection Agreement offers hope for influencing public policy. The agreement has been signed by more than 200 mayors committed to meeting the goals of the Kyoto agreement on emissions affecting global warming. Those mayors represent 55 million people.
Scott Wolf, executive director of Grow Smart Rhode Island, said his advocacy organization started a land-use training program for municipalities in his state about four years ago and has found that it makes a difference.
CHARTER CHANGES
A plenary session at the end the conference discussed whether to make additions to the Charter, which was adopted at a CNU congress in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1996. The proposals were aimed at affirming the importance of affordability and adding a reference to the Transect — a tool that had not been devised a decade ago. Speck said the Transect, unlike other topics and issues in the Charter, is not understood by ordinary people and therefore should not be inserted in it. Affordability drew a more sustained discussion, but in the end, those participating in the Sunday session decided that the CNU board should continue work on an affordability statement during the next year and consider presenting it to the membership during the middle (rather than the conclusion) of the next Congress, scheduled for May 17-20, 2007, in Philadelphia.
ENERGY ISSUES
Julian Darley, director of the Post Carbon Institute, said “big energy,” including suppliers such as the major oil companies, has “an uncertain future” because oil production worldwide will peak by about 2010 — if it hasn’t already peaked. At the same time, “natural gas is a failing resource in North America,” its production having peaked in the US in the 1970s and in Canada in 1991, according to Darley. Because pipelines are the only practical means of transporting large quantities of natural gas, it “cannot be easily imported” from outside North America, he said.
The limited production of oil and gas, combined with worldwide population growth, means that “supply shortages are going to come faster than expected,” he warned. “There are limits to growth; we’re reaching them.” Vehicles will have to be slower and lighter, he said. He observed that car-sharing can dramatically reduce driving, but in general, society will “need to move from a fuel [economy] to a foot economy.” In Darley’s view, “it’s going to mean getting the car out of our lives.”
Society will have to respond by producing more goods and services locally. “We need to surround urban areas with production of food, fuel, and feedstock,” Darley said. The trend will be toward “relocalization,” he said. He emphasized its benefits: “increased community, better environmental conditions, and renewal of local businesses.”
Darley’s presentation was in many respects a calmed-down version of what James Howard Kunstler has argued in speeches and in his book The Long Emergency. Duany summed up the energy situation by saying, “We are becoming a normal country — not a poor country but a normal country. We have to be smarter. We inhabited an entire continent by being smart, not by being rich. We need to go back to that level of intelligence.”
This article is available in the July/August 2006 issue of New Urban News, along with many more articles not available online. Subscribe or order the individual issue. |