I recently drove past an area of West Philadelphia that was "re-developed", and I use that term very lightly. Dilapidated row-homes were torn down and replaced with duplexes replete with lawns, backyards, and driveways. It looked as though some horribly designed suburban sub-division was dropped in an urban area. Nothing was congruent with its surroundings. It felt wrong.
The only book I have ever read with extremely sound guidelines for constructing the physical spaces that house our communities is Jane Jacobs' The Life and Death of Great American Cities. In a nutshell, Jacobs advocates for urban communities that are:
- Diverse in multiple dimensions, including socioeconomic status.
- Mixed in land-use, so that commercial and residential areas are integrated, with an emphasis on commercial centers at street intersections.
- Small-scale, as small blocks encourage interaction between people.
- Connected to an integrated public transportation system to decrease the need for automobile transportation. Pedestrians and bicyclists should reclaim urban neighborhoods from the blight of traffic and car congestion. Other planning techniques, such as traffic calming and street parking design, should be used as well.
1 comment:
Without knowing what was in that neighborhood to begin with, I've got to say that duplexes with back yards are much closer to the Jacobs ideal than to that of the man usually cited as her nemesis--Robert Moses. Jacobs, a product of New York City's West Village, would have wanted everybody out on the front steps, of course, not in the back yard, but what you describe certainly sounds more neighborly than a Robert Moses-style Superblock high-rise apartment cluster surrounding a desolate and wind-swept "park." Think of the three highrises at the western end of the Penn campus or, the quintessential example--public housing projects. Duplexes may not be townhouses, but they provide a small scale and an urban density that is probably a pretty good compromise between the two--especially for people unwilling to give up their cars.
Post a Comment