Tuesday, May 30, 2006
CNU XIV
I will be in Providence, Rhode Island this week enjoying my second Congress for the New Urbanism conference. Look for my report on www.planetizen.com early next week, which will include pictures and a summary of what has become the most influential conference in city and town planning.
I am especially excited to see the great New England city of Providence highlighted in what will surely be a successful event. Hope to see you there!
I am especially excited to see the great New England city of Providence highlighted in what will surely be a successful event. Hope to see you there!
Sunday, May 21, 2006
Cherry Hill Village Pics
Parks and opens space
Town Square...too cold still to run the fountain.
Village Theatre: Not the most pleasing architecture, but a great anchor for the downtown.
Mews: There are a few of these within the site.
Missed opportunity here. A totally suburban configuration.
Typical Street.
Move in day.For a site plan, phasing, and more pertinent info please visit www.cherryhillvillage.com
And Finally... My Cherry Hill Village Critique
I have been meaning to post this critique of Cherry Hill Village for quite some time. Due to the limitations of blogger.com, I found it easier to simply post pics all at once, and then integrate the majority of the text afterwards. Sorry for the jumbledness, but I think you get the idea.
The Project
Cherry Hill Village, founded in 2001, is a 338 acre traditional neighborhood development (TND) in the exurbs of metropolitan Detroit. Unlike the rest of the Pulte and Toll Brother residential subdivisions that ignobly dot this once rural landscape, Cherry Hill Village offers an alternative to the single use, auto-oriented, and homogenous suburban “neighborhood.” This is accomplished by integrating many principles of the new urbanism.
Though the new urbanism is defined by and implemented on many different scales, it is frequently characterized as an interdisciplinary urban design movement that reintegrates walkable, mixed-use, diverse, and more environmentally sensitive patterns of development back into our town building practices. In the past two decades new urbanism has gained significant traction as an alternative to the conventional placeless sprawl that continues to degrade the political, social, economic, and environmental health of the built environment.
Brief History
Cherry Hill was established in 1825 as a small rural hamlet at the crossroads of Cherry Hill and Ridge Roads. As the community began to grow its settlement pattern required the construction of a church, school, general store, creamery, cemetery, and a number of residential buildings. By the early 20th century Cherry Hill served as one of the most prolific providers of sweet corn to the growing Detroit market region. Henry Ford took notice and added Cherry Hill to his “Village Industries” program.
Today Canton Township has lost much of its rural character to national homebuilder subdivisions, but the lack of sewer and water connections always seemed to discourage significant development in the Cherry Hill area. In order to protect the area from intense development pressure Canton Township decided to proactively guide future growth in the area to “preserve the character, scale, and quality of the community aesthetic.” This response helped shape the Cherry Hill Village TND in a way that was consistent with the Township’s development goals. Thus, as the design and build-out of the first two phases has taken place, the historic community buildings that originally defined the hamlet have been preserved and integrated within the new Cherry Hill Village.
The concept for Cherry Hill Village was originally conceived in the mid -1990’s by Biltmore Properties, a leading southeast Michigan land development company who bills themselves as “Town Builders Since 1924.” Despite the catchy slogan, representatives from Biltmore Properties spent a significant amount of time learning the principles of real town building by studying the new urbanism. As a result of their work, Biltmore Properties hired Looney Ricks Kiss Architects, an architecture firm experienced in traditional neighborhood design, to successfully integrate the diverse elements of the new urbanism, and to preserve Cherry Hill’s character, scale and aesthetic qualities.
Concept
The Cherry Hill Village plan was built using a “Design, Density and Dynamics” strategy. The mixed-use village core was thought of as an “enhanced hub of civic, social, commercial and special activities” for the community. The “crown jewel” of the core is the village square, which is located directly across from the original schoolhouse and terminates the intersection of Ridge and Cherry Hill Roads.
As one moves away from the village center the density of development decreases and lot size gently increases. Eventually the pattern returns itself to the rural and agricultural uses at the edge of the development. This gradient of development is designed to be consistent with the concept of the urban to rural transect.
Critique
Though new urbanism successfully accommodates a great variety of architectural styles, a regional vernacular style of architecture common to pre-World War II is consistently the most visible and criticized component in the physical realization of new urbanist communities. Yet to many practicing new urbanists it is not the architecture, but a commitment to all scales of urbanism that truly elevates the movement above the conventional building practices. This commitment to the urbanism is demonstrated by the form of buildings, the layout and width of streets, the distance of setbacks, the placement of parking facilities, the quality of materials, and the design of public spaces that facilitate diverse human interaction, physical activity, and a high level of connectivity between all people and the places they need to go. These are the standards from which I have chosen to analyze Cherry Hill Village.
When held against its principles, new urbanist communities are often designed and implemented with varying success. This variation is sometimes explained by those in the ‘growth machine’ who have little understanding of urbanism, but a desire to target a specific segment of the real estate market. Having never heard anything about, or personally seen Cherry Hill Village until a month ago, I was curious as to how it would hold up to the design principles that I hold in such high esteem. Thus, from an urban design perspective Cherry Hill Village presented a unique opportunity for study and critique.
The above site plan displays Cherry Hill Village at full build out. Currently, phase I is complete, and phase II is nearly complete (see below). The “Uptown” district, which is the maroon and orange buildings seen in the middle right between the wider end of the “wishbone” streets, is comprised mostly of multi-family town homes/apartments and is also close to completion.
Streets and Circulation
Cherry Hill Village is located in Wayne County, where most public road design standards are skewed toward the need of the automobiles. Traffic moves fast, pedestrian amenities are an afterthought, and bicycling facilities do not exist. Cherry Village on the other hand uses its village scale and design to appropriately cater to automobiles, bicyclists, and pedestrians. This approach is accomplished by integrating wide sidewalks, relatively narrow street widths, on street parking, street deflection, multi-use paths, and a general pattern of connectivity throughout the entire development. As a result, the streets are seen as a common space amongst residents, and not as a threat to their personal safety.
Though the residential streets are well designed, the town center still lacks cohesiveness. This is because the town center is located at the crossroads of two major, but historically rural Canton thoroughfares – Cherry Hill and Ridge Roads. The town center side of Cherry Hill Road presents a nice pedestrian street experience, while the other lacks urban amenities all together. The pictures below properly display a violation of the urban to rural transect, and demonstrate an awkward lack of spatial enclosure. An improved design orientation for the town center might have defined both street edges with mixed-use buildings, while also keeping a presence on these two heavily trafficked County roads.
Also, despite a fairly tight knit core, the street pattern in the edge neighborhoods feels too curvilinear and suburban. I experienced this both in my automobile and as a pedestrian. The village master plan explains that the confusing orientation is due to odd lot sizes, and the landform created by the River Rouge. I find this hard to believe, as the River Rouge is nowhere near most of the residential sites. I am not necessarily advocating for a strict Midwestern styled grid, nor would I ask the designers to ignore topography or view sheds, but by looking at the site map one can see that a few of the edge neighborhood are glorified cul-de-sacs. This suburban pattern makes the town center seem much further away than it is for the residents on the edge. I suspect that these conditions have less to do with topography, and more to do with maximizing the amount of parcels available for development.
Streetscapes and Pedestrian Environment
As I mentioned in the section above, Cherry Hill Village is a great environment for walking. This holds true for both the town center and the residential neighborhoods.
Most of the streetscapes in Cherry Hill Village are filled with interesting design features that lead the pedestrian to real destinations like neighborhood parks, the town center, and multi-use recreational paths. I particularly feel that once the trees mature, the mews will be one of the most intimate spaces in the whole village.
However, as nice as the streetscapes are in Cherry Hill Village, the designers did a horrible disservice to the main streetscape in the “Uptown” district of the Village.
This particular district is supposed to be one of the most urban places in the village. Apartment buildings, town homes, and condominiums bring the highest density within the closest proximity of the town center. Yet, the broad side of these particular buildings opens up to parking lots, rather than the street. It effectively ruins the visual continuity of the street, and serves up many views of the ugly internal town center parking lot and the monolithic back end of the theatre (upper left, 2nd picture). Interestingly, further down the street and away from the urban core apartment buildings of a similar vintage actually do line the street. Why the first sets of apartment buildings are not oriented to the actual street is beyond me.
Open Space
The neighborhood parks are probably the single most important design oriented amenity in Cherry Hill Village. The parks function at the scale of the neighborhood, and are defined by the tight residential lots that surround them. In essence the parks serve as the center to each neighborhood. They also bring a sense of rural solitude to a development that is far more urban than the typical Detroit exurban community.
From a design perspective the parks seem to strike a nice balance between programmed playground space, open grass, and the more formal village square and village green. This flexibility allows the spaces to evolve if need be, and allows the residents to picnic, play soccer, or have larger community gatherings. The neighborhood greenway path is also a great recreational amenity that affords residents the ability to move throughout the neighborhoods with ease.
Buildings
Before sticking a shovel in the ground, Biltmore Properties used a visual preference survey to help them determine the overall architectural style of the Cherry Hill Development. Traditional Victorian architecture common to southeast Michigan was preferred and is therefore consistent throughout Cherry Hill Village. Simple geometries and rectangular, square, or L-shaped homes give the residences a feeling of coherence, but also allow the close-knit buildings to differentiate themselves with unique porches, turrets, roof types, and other distinct architectural details. Exterior building materials are primarily brick or wood clapboard, which despite several variations (some ugly) again provide a feeling of unity to the architecture. The town center is primarily brick and features three and four story buildings, as opposed to the residential neighborhoods that feature either one or two story homes. Thus, one might say the town center, “plays nicely” with the surrounding neighborhoods, but also clearly defines itself as a commercial district.
Parking
In the development industry it is typically said, and often lamented, that form follows parking. However, by following several principles of the new urbanism, Cherry Hill Village manages to create a more balanced approach. This is done by integrating alley ways, screened parking lots, on street parking, and by placing garages behind principle residential structures. This type of design demonstrates that though cars are welcome in Cherry Hill Village, they are not the priority. My only gripe related to parking is the aforementioned “Uptown” situation where parking is clearly prioritized over the built form. The area suffers because of it.
Uses
One of the biggest challenges to creating a new town center is getting the retail to prosper. Many new town centers intelligently integrate commercial uses within the design of the community as a whole, but still find that retail struggles until the right balance of demand and space is achieved. Though Cherry Hill Village has already seen a financial service office and a pizza restaurant come and go, its vacant retail space is quickly disappearing. As of my last visit, a new coffee shop, florist, gift shop, and bank are getting ready to join an insurance agency, general store, ice cream shop, dentist office, fitness center, the Cherry Hill Village sales office, and a daycare in the town center. Also in the pipeline are a recently approved K-8 Canton Township school and a full service grocery store. With no other commercial activity nearby, Cherry Hill Village has positioned itself to also become the town center for all of the nearby Pulte subdivisions, which offer no such amenities.
Despite the seemingly early commercial success, it is actually the Village Theatre that has defined the early success of the Cherry Hill Village. With a capacity of 400 and over 300 performances throughout the year, the Village Theatre is a major draw for the region and has given the most prominent street corner an identifiable and community oriented use. This was an intelligent strategy.
Another great success for Cherry Hill Village is the diversity in its housing stock. With single family homes, condos, town homes, apartments, and auxiliary units of all sizes and price points, a wide range of people can find something affordable in Cherry Hill Village. Moreover, besides the “Uptown” district, the different housing types are well integrated throughout the various neighborhoods. It will be interesting to see how long the area remains affordable, especially after the new school is constructed.
Conclusion
Since Cherry Hill Village is the first new urbanist TND development to be designed and significantly built out in the State of Michigan, its successes and failures are being closely followed by those with a stake in the development of the region’s built environment. Fortunately the early success of Cherry Hill Village has brought the need for smart growth in southeast Michigan to the forefront. Moreover, the development has demonstrated that new urbanism can provide comprehensive design solutions for building places with lasting value. Cherry Hill Village also provides a concrete example of how the private and public sectors can work together to simultaneously meet their seemingly disparate goals.
On a macro level Cherry Hill Village is a success. However, its exurban location and the quasi-suburban design features (streets patterns, parking and configuration in Uptown) open the development up to a well-deserved level of criticism. However, when considering that Biltmore Properties had no prior with TND experience, they have managed to produce a quality alternative to what could be characterized as “more of the same.” Yet, as successful as Cherry Hill Village has been thus far, when I asked their proud lead engineer if the company planned to do another new urbanist project, he furrowed his brow and said, “I don’t know, it’s awfully hard.” This where the real critique needs to happen.
The Project
Cherry Hill Village, founded in 2001, is a 338 acre traditional neighborhood development (TND) in the exurbs of metropolitan Detroit. Unlike the rest of the Pulte and Toll Brother residential subdivisions that ignobly dot this once rural landscape, Cherry Hill Village offers an alternative to the single use, auto-oriented, and homogenous suburban “neighborhood.” This is accomplished by integrating many principles of the new urbanism.
Though the new urbanism is defined by and implemented on many different scales, it is frequently characterized as an interdisciplinary urban design movement that reintegrates walkable, mixed-use, diverse, and more environmentally sensitive patterns of development back into our town building practices. In the past two decades new urbanism has gained significant traction as an alternative to the conventional placeless sprawl that continues to degrade the political, social, economic, and environmental health of the built environment.
Brief History
Cherry Hill was established in 1825 as a small rural hamlet at the crossroads of Cherry Hill and Ridge Roads. As the community began to grow its settlement pattern required the construction of a church, school, general store, creamery, cemetery, and a number of residential buildings. By the early 20th century Cherry Hill served as one of the most prolific providers of sweet corn to the growing Detroit market region. Henry Ford took notice and added Cherry Hill to his “Village Industries” program.
Today Canton Township has lost much of its rural character to national homebuilder subdivisions, but the lack of sewer and water connections always seemed to discourage significant development in the Cherry Hill area. In order to protect the area from intense development pressure Canton Township decided to proactively guide future growth in the area to “preserve the character, scale, and quality of the community aesthetic.” This response helped shape the Cherry Hill Village TND in a way that was consistent with the Township’s development goals. Thus, as the design and build-out of the first two phases has taken place, the historic community buildings that originally defined the hamlet have been preserved and integrated within the new Cherry Hill Village.
The concept for Cherry Hill Village was originally conceived in the mid -1990’s by Biltmore Properties, a leading southeast Michigan land development company who bills themselves as “Town Builders Since 1924.” Despite the catchy slogan, representatives from Biltmore Properties spent a significant amount of time learning the principles of real town building by studying the new urbanism. As a result of their work, Biltmore Properties hired Looney Ricks Kiss Architects, an architecture firm experienced in traditional neighborhood design, to successfully integrate the diverse elements of the new urbanism, and to preserve Cherry Hill’s character, scale and aesthetic qualities.
Concept
The Cherry Hill Village plan was built using a “Design, Density and Dynamics” strategy. The mixed-use village core was thought of as an “enhanced hub of civic, social, commercial and special activities” for the community. The “crown jewel” of the core is the village square, which is located directly across from the original schoolhouse and terminates the intersection of Ridge and Cherry Hill Roads.
As one moves away from the village center the density of development decreases and lot size gently increases. Eventually the pattern returns itself to the rural and agricultural uses at the edge of the development. This gradient of development is designed to be consistent with the concept of the urban to rural transect.
Critique
Though new urbanism successfully accommodates a great variety of architectural styles, a regional vernacular style of architecture common to pre-World War II is consistently the most visible and criticized component in the physical realization of new urbanist communities. Yet to many practicing new urbanists it is not the architecture, but a commitment to all scales of urbanism that truly elevates the movement above the conventional building practices. This commitment to the urbanism is demonstrated by the form of buildings, the layout and width of streets, the distance of setbacks, the placement of parking facilities, the quality of materials, and the design of public spaces that facilitate diverse human interaction, physical activity, and a high level of connectivity between all people and the places they need to go. These are the standards from which I have chosen to analyze Cherry Hill Village.
When held against its principles, new urbanist communities are often designed and implemented with varying success. This variation is sometimes explained by those in the ‘growth machine’ who have little understanding of urbanism, but a desire to target a specific segment of the real estate market. Having never heard anything about, or personally seen Cherry Hill Village until a month ago, I was curious as to how it would hold up to the design principles that I hold in such high esteem. Thus, from an urban design perspective Cherry Hill Village presented a unique opportunity for study and critique.
The above site plan displays Cherry Hill Village at full build out. Currently, phase I is complete, and phase II is nearly complete (see below). The “Uptown” district, which is the maroon and orange buildings seen in the middle right between the wider end of the “wishbone” streets, is comprised mostly of multi-family town homes/apartments and is also close to completion.
Streets and Circulation
Cherry Hill Village is located in Wayne County, where most public road design standards are skewed toward the need of the automobiles. Traffic moves fast, pedestrian amenities are an afterthought, and bicycling facilities do not exist. Cherry Village on the other hand uses its village scale and design to appropriately cater to automobiles, bicyclists, and pedestrians. This approach is accomplished by integrating wide sidewalks, relatively narrow street widths, on street parking, street deflection, multi-use paths, and a general pattern of connectivity throughout the entire development. As a result, the streets are seen as a common space amongst residents, and not as a threat to their personal safety.
Though the residential streets are well designed, the town center still lacks cohesiveness. This is because the town center is located at the crossroads of two major, but historically rural Canton thoroughfares – Cherry Hill and Ridge Roads. The town center side of Cherry Hill Road presents a nice pedestrian street experience, while the other lacks urban amenities all together. The pictures below properly display a violation of the urban to rural transect, and demonstrate an awkward lack of spatial enclosure. An improved design orientation for the town center might have defined both street edges with mixed-use buildings, while also keeping a presence on these two heavily trafficked County roads.
Also, despite a fairly tight knit core, the street pattern in the edge neighborhoods feels too curvilinear and suburban. I experienced this both in my automobile and as a pedestrian. The village master plan explains that the confusing orientation is due to odd lot sizes, and the landform created by the River Rouge. I find this hard to believe, as the River Rouge is nowhere near most of the residential sites. I am not necessarily advocating for a strict Midwestern styled grid, nor would I ask the designers to ignore topography or view sheds, but by looking at the site map one can see that a few of the edge neighborhood are glorified cul-de-sacs. This suburban pattern makes the town center seem much further away than it is for the residents on the edge. I suspect that these conditions have less to do with topography, and more to do with maximizing the amount of parcels available for development.
Streetscapes and Pedestrian Environment
As I mentioned in the section above, Cherry Hill Village is a great environment for walking. This holds true for both the town center and the residential neighborhoods.
Most of the streetscapes in Cherry Hill Village are filled with interesting design features that lead the pedestrian to real destinations like neighborhood parks, the town center, and multi-use recreational paths. I particularly feel that once the trees mature, the mews will be one of the most intimate spaces in the whole village.
However, as nice as the streetscapes are in Cherry Hill Village, the designers did a horrible disservice to the main streetscape in the “Uptown” district of the Village.
This particular district is supposed to be one of the most urban places in the village. Apartment buildings, town homes, and condominiums bring the highest density within the closest proximity of the town center. Yet, the broad side of these particular buildings opens up to parking lots, rather than the street. It effectively ruins the visual continuity of the street, and serves up many views of the ugly internal town center parking lot and the monolithic back end of the theatre (upper left, 2nd picture). Interestingly, further down the street and away from the urban core apartment buildings of a similar vintage actually do line the street. Why the first sets of apartment buildings are not oriented to the actual street is beyond me.
Open Space
The neighborhood parks are probably the single most important design oriented amenity in Cherry Hill Village. The parks function at the scale of the neighborhood, and are defined by the tight residential lots that surround them. In essence the parks serve as the center to each neighborhood. They also bring a sense of rural solitude to a development that is far more urban than the typical Detroit exurban community.
From a design perspective the parks seem to strike a nice balance between programmed playground space, open grass, and the more formal village square and village green. This flexibility allows the spaces to evolve if need be, and allows the residents to picnic, play soccer, or have larger community gatherings. The neighborhood greenway path is also a great recreational amenity that affords residents the ability to move throughout the neighborhoods with ease.
Buildings
Before sticking a shovel in the ground, Biltmore Properties used a visual preference survey to help them determine the overall architectural style of the Cherry Hill Development. Traditional Victorian architecture common to southeast Michigan was preferred and is therefore consistent throughout Cherry Hill Village. Simple geometries and rectangular, square, or L-shaped homes give the residences a feeling of coherence, but also allow the close-knit buildings to differentiate themselves with unique porches, turrets, roof types, and other distinct architectural details. Exterior building materials are primarily brick or wood clapboard, which despite several variations (some ugly) again provide a feeling of unity to the architecture. The town center is primarily brick and features three and four story buildings, as opposed to the residential neighborhoods that feature either one or two story homes. Thus, one might say the town center, “plays nicely” with the surrounding neighborhoods, but also clearly defines itself as a commercial district.
Parking
In the development industry it is typically said, and often lamented, that form follows parking. However, by following several principles of the new urbanism, Cherry Hill Village manages to create a more balanced approach. This is done by integrating alley ways, screened parking lots, on street parking, and by placing garages behind principle residential structures. This type of design demonstrates that though cars are welcome in Cherry Hill Village, they are not the priority. My only gripe related to parking is the aforementioned “Uptown” situation where parking is clearly prioritized over the built form. The area suffers because of it.
Uses
One of the biggest challenges to creating a new town center is getting the retail to prosper. Many new town centers intelligently integrate commercial uses within the design of the community as a whole, but still find that retail struggles until the right balance of demand and space is achieved. Though Cherry Hill Village has already seen a financial service office and a pizza restaurant come and go, its vacant retail space is quickly disappearing. As of my last visit, a new coffee shop, florist, gift shop, and bank are getting ready to join an insurance agency, general store, ice cream shop, dentist office, fitness center, the Cherry Hill Village sales office, and a daycare in the town center. Also in the pipeline are a recently approved K-8 Canton Township school and a full service grocery store. With no other commercial activity nearby, Cherry Hill Village has positioned itself to also become the town center for all of the nearby Pulte subdivisions, which offer no such amenities.
Despite the seemingly early commercial success, it is actually the Village Theatre that has defined the early success of the Cherry Hill Village. With a capacity of 400 and over 300 performances throughout the year, the Village Theatre is a major draw for the region and has given the most prominent street corner an identifiable and community oriented use. This was an intelligent strategy.
Another great success for Cherry Hill Village is the diversity in its housing stock. With single family homes, condos, town homes, apartments, and auxiliary units of all sizes and price points, a wide range of people can find something affordable in Cherry Hill Village. Moreover, besides the “Uptown” district, the different housing types are well integrated throughout the various neighborhoods. It will be interesting to see how long the area remains affordable, especially after the new school is constructed.
Conclusion
Since Cherry Hill Village is the first new urbanist TND development to be designed and significantly built out in the State of Michigan, its successes and failures are being closely followed by those with a stake in the development of the region’s built environment. Fortunately the early success of Cherry Hill Village has brought the need for smart growth in southeast Michigan to the forefront. Moreover, the development has demonstrated that new urbanism can provide comprehensive design solutions for building places with lasting value. Cherry Hill Village also provides a concrete example of how the private and public sectors can work together to simultaneously meet their seemingly disparate goals.
On a macro level Cherry Hill Village is a success. However, its exurban location and the quasi-suburban design features (streets patterns, parking and configuration in Uptown) open the development up to a well-deserved level of criticism. However, when considering that Biltmore Properties had no prior with TND experience, they have managed to produce a quality alternative to what could be characterized as “more of the same.” Yet, as successful as Cherry Hill Village has been thus far, when I asked their proud lead engineer if the company planned to do another new urbanist project, he furrowed his brow and said, “I don’t know, it’s awfully hard.” This where the real critique needs to happen.
Sunday, May 14, 2006
Miami 21
I am Sitting in the Cafetto, a coffee and internet cafe in South Beach, and for the past hour and a half I have been the only one pounding away on my key board. If the palm trees, 90 degree weather, and constantly beautiful people sitings were not enough, this coffee shop has driven home the point that I am now in a very different environment. Back in Boston and Ann Arbor I spent numerous Sunday afternoons with dozens of other people catching up on the Sunday newspaper, doing school work, and hanging out with friends. Apparently, the wireless internet cafe is not the place for such activities in Miami. Lesson learned.
Nevertheless, I am happy to be here. Miami is a very interesting place, and one that is starting to realize its potential as a great international city. Moreover, work at DPZ began with a bang last week as I was instantly thrown onto the Miami 21 project, which is a complete rezoning of the entire City of Miami. We unveiled the plans for the first quadrant yesterday to a very large crowd of developers, laywers, and citizen activists. Overall, I think it went well.
In short, Miami 21 is an effort to streamline and simplify the development process, while also creating a much more livable Miami for the future. To do so, the project is moving from a use-based to a form based code. To my knowledge it is the largest application of a form-based code. It is an ambitious project for which DPZ is the lead consultant, and a project that I will spend much of my time on this summer. You can read more about it here and here.
Nevertheless, I am happy to be here. Miami is a very interesting place, and one that is starting to realize its potential as a great international city. Moreover, work at DPZ began with a bang last week as I was instantly thrown onto the Miami 21 project, which is a complete rezoning of the entire City of Miami. We unveiled the plans for the first quadrant yesterday to a very large crowd of developers, laywers, and citizen activists. Overall, I think it went well.
In short, Miami 21 is an effort to streamline and simplify the development process, while also creating a much more livable Miami for the future. To do so, the project is moving from a use-based to a form based code. To my knowledge it is the largest application of a form-based code. It is an ambitious project for which DPZ is the lead consultant, and a project that I will spend much of my time on this summer. You can read more about it here and here.
Tuesday, May 02, 2006
A Couple Of Thoughts...
Though I promised that this next post would be an in-depth analysis of Cherry Hill Village, I am currently in my home state of Maine without my computer. Thus, my review, which has been written, will be posted after I return to Michigan and make my move to Miami. So instead, this will just be a bit of a schmorgasboard of thoughts.
I survived my first year of graduate school in good order. Some of the highlights were working on a corridor redevelopment plan in Detroit, creating a small TOD that included an extension of the traditional town fabric of Dexter, Michigan, and completing a site plan and financial analysis for the redevelopment of a suburban strip in Ann Arbor into a mixed-use town center. One final highlight was working for Duany Plater-Zyberk and Company during my spring break. Fortunately, they have asked me back for the summer. Hence, the previously mentioned move to Miami. I'm sure my time there will give me plenty to write about -- that is if I have the time.
I would also like to comment briefly on the death of one of my biggest heroes, Jane Jacobs. I originally wrote quite a long post regarding my feelings for her work and its effect on my own, but it unfortunately got lost somewhere in cyberspace last week. If you are reading this you probably have a enough of an understanding that I can simply leave it with my two favorite Jacobs quotes:
"Our songs and cities are the best things about us, songs and cities are so indispensable."
-and-
"Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody."
Finally, I find it very interesting, if not disturbing that after a week of articles highlighting Ms. Jacobs' many accomplishments and contributions to the field, a rash of people this week have chosen to take cheap shots at not only her work, but the work of the new urbanists. I specifically mean the recent Nicoloai Ouroursoff article in the New York Times, and the most recent Wall Street Journal article by Leonard Gilroy, who is a policy analyst at the infamous Reason Institute. It is quite interesting how these two were able to conveniently use the death of one of the foremost luminaries in the field as a way to take cheap shots at new urbanism, a movement based on principles that they clearly do not comprehend.
If you take a moment to read Gilroy's article you will see that he equates smart growth, high density planning with an "end-state vision of the city." He implies that Smart Growth is a Utopian cure-all for our built maladies. As if those who are proponents of Smart Growth are naive enough to think that we can implement transit-oriented development and all will be right with the world.
Gilroy further comments that new urbanism is no different than the "social engineering mentality of those who wrought the disaster of postwar urban renewal." Clearly, the man is misinformed.
However, what particularly bothers me about Gilroy's article is that he tries to place himself, a defender of the "market oriented" suburban pattern, between Jacobs and the new urbanists, as if Jacobs herself would defend the sprawling patterns that inevitably occur because of our antiquated postwar financing and zoning regulations. The issues are much deeper than Gilroy leads the reader to believe.
Furthermore, he says that, " ...you can't create a vibrant city or neighborhood. The best cities and neighborhoods just happen, and the best thing we can do is to step out of the way of innovators and entrepreneurs."
Cities and neighborhoods do not just happen. This is a complete oversimplification of the historical processes, policies, and power struggles that have forever shaped the urban landscape. Gilroy would do well to understand that you don't just wish upon a city and *poof* Greenwich Village, or Charleston, North Carolina.
Finally, like most other critics of smart growth and new urbanism, neither Ouroursoff or Gilroy proposed any type of alternative solution, idea, or thought on how cities should grow and change. This is where I would like the critics to step-up and stop rehashing old arguments that just make them look ignorant. Until they do, all of their critiques seem as hollow as they claim new urbanism to be.
I survived my first year of graduate school in good order. Some of the highlights were working on a corridor redevelopment plan in Detroit, creating a small TOD that included an extension of the traditional town fabric of Dexter, Michigan, and completing a site plan and financial analysis for the redevelopment of a suburban strip in Ann Arbor into a mixed-use town center. One final highlight was working for Duany Plater-Zyberk and Company during my spring break. Fortunately, they have asked me back for the summer. Hence, the previously mentioned move to Miami. I'm sure my time there will give me plenty to write about -- that is if I have the time.
I would also like to comment briefly on the death of one of my biggest heroes, Jane Jacobs. I originally wrote quite a long post regarding my feelings for her work and its effect on my own, but it unfortunately got lost somewhere in cyberspace last week. If you are reading this you probably have a enough of an understanding that I can simply leave it with my two favorite Jacobs quotes:
"Our songs and cities are the best things about us, songs and cities are so indispensable."
-and-
"Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody."
Finally, I find it very interesting, if not disturbing that after a week of articles highlighting Ms. Jacobs' many accomplishments and contributions to the field, a rash of people this week have chosen to take cheap shots at not only her work, but the work of the new urbanists. I specifically mean the recent Nicoloai Ouroursoff article in the New York Times, and the most recent Wall Street Journal article by Leonard Gilroy, who is a policy analyst at the infamous Reason Institute. It is quite interesting how these two were able to conveniently use the death of one of the foremost luminaries in the field as a way to take cheap shots at new urbanism, a movement based on principles that they clearly do not comprehend.
If you take a moment to read Gilroy's article you will see that he equates smart growth, high density planning with an "end-state vision of the city." He implies that Smart Growth is a Utopian cure-all for our built maladies. As if those who are proponents of Smart Growth are naive enough to think that we can implement transit-oriented development and all will be right with the world.
Gilroy further comments that new urbanism is no different than the "social engineering mentality of those who wrought the disaster of postwar urban renewal." Clearly, the man is misinformed.
However, what particularly bothers me about Gilroy's article is that he tries to place himself, a defender of the "market oriented" suburban pattern, between Jacobs and the new urbanists, as if Jacobs herself would defend the sprawling patterns that inevitably occur because of our antiquated postwar financing and zoning regulations. The issues are much deeper than Gilroy leads the reader to believe.
Furthermore, he says that, " ...you can't create a vibrant city or neighborhood. The best cities and neighborhoods just happen, and the best thing we can do is to step out of the way of innovators and entrepreneurs."
Cities and neighborhoods do not just happen. This is a complete oversimplification of the historical processes, policies, and power struggles that have forever shaped the urban landscape. Gilroy would do well to understand that you don't just wish upon a city and *poof* Greenwich Village, or Charleston, North Carolina.
Finally, like most other critics of smart growth and new urbanism, neither Ouroursoff or Gilroy proposed any type of alternative solution, idea, or thought on how cities should grow and change. This is where I would like the critics to step-up and stop rehashing old arguments that just make them look ignorant. Until they do, all of their critiques seem as hollow as they claim new urbanism to be.
