The Vancouver Achievement

I was struck by the simple yet profound guidelines that the city of Vancouver created for the False Creek North Development Plan in 1989. In some ways these simple guidelines seem ahead of many of the overall design guidelines for most of the cities of which I am familiar. What I didn’t pick up from the reading is why Vancouver has had such progressive and successful urban design strategies as compared with most North American cities and why so few cities have taken so long to emulate these guidelines? Are cities so different in their setting, nature, and culture that Vancouver’s examples seem too far-fetched to try to emulate?

Having spent the summer working for a developer I also wonder about the overall health of the residential real estate market in Vancouver. When the city was creating these policies was the residential market strong? I think the city of Oakland is a good example of a city council and planning commission which is, in many ways, beholden to developers because they fear that ‘over-regulation’ will result in reduced investment. And Oakland financially cannot afford reduced investment. The length of the debate surrounding inclusionary housing is a good example of the fear of scaring away real estate investment from the city. On the other hand, San Francisco seems like a strong candidate for implementation of an urban design strategy. Is the Urban Design Plan that Allan Jacobs helped write still city policy? During my summer, working on a variety of projects in San Francisco, we often discussed zoning and other city ordinances but I never once heard discussion about complying with or emulating any aspect of the Urban Design Plan. Why has Vancouver been more successful in creating an urban design plan and ensuring its implementation?

My direct experience in development also suggests that the articulation of street-level units toward the street is filtering down to developers and architects. Two of the projects I worked over the summer, one in Old Oakland and one in Richmond very specifically wrapped their parking structures with outward facing units of both units and retail space. Interestingly, similar to the developers in Vancouver, most of the units were considered less desirable than the above-grade units and have smaller square footage and cheaper price points. Unfortunately most of the street-level units in both projects lack some of the best-practice guidelines that resulted from the Vancouver study. I am fairly confident that neither of the projects included gardens or terraces in their design or on-street parking, which seemed to be two of the factors that most influenced interaction between the street and the private spaces within the home. Will this dramatically reduce their effectiveness as providing ‘eyes on the street’ and positive private/public transitions? While I was not involved in the initial designs of the buildings I believe that since both of the developments are being constructed in traditionally poorer neighborhoods there was a fear that these types of open terraces/gardens might reduce perceptions of safety and privacy in these dwellings. As new developments continue in these areas it will be interesting to see whether the designs for street-level dwellings will remain Spartan or expand to include better public/private transition spaces.
What remains to be answered for me is whether poorly designed street facing units on multi-family dwellings are better than no street facing units? So often in urban design it seems like great design gets ‘dumbed down’ to its most basic and understandable components. In this process the positive aspects of the original designs get lost or transformed often leading to ultimately negative outcomes. Personally I lean toward believing that street-level units in multi-family dwellings are good practice regardless of their ultimate form. I hope that the street-level units in the developments I am familiar with sell well enough that developers will find that creating even better designed street-level units are worth their investment.
Lastly, as a planner I am interested in the effect that so much residential development is having on the overall Vancouver economy. One of the most often-cited problems in the Bay Area is the housing/jobs imbalance. But places like San Jose and San Francisco, who have relatively strong (well, up until a few months ago) residential markets have essentially eliminated the ability of residential developments to replace commercial and industrial space. There are obvious fiscal reasons for doing this but the contradiction points to the complexity of the Vancouver model, which focuses so heavily on creating downtown residential neighborhoods, one might say, at the expense of office/commercial/industrial development

The Ecological Paradigm and Urban Design

I find that one of the most serendipitous and coincidental aspects of the ecological paradigm in urban design is that it reinforces all of the ‘good’ design principles that many designers, researchers, and politicians have been talking about for years but for which they have found little traction in practice. I’m amazed at the increasing importance of the ecological paradigm and its role in both changing public behavior and political attitude. Of course not all aspects of the ecological paradigm have as much traction as others. For example, the fundamental infrastructure necessary for implementing a more metabolic (less throughput) type model of material use and reuse, while necessary for future sustainability, will have trouble finding implementation on a large-scale because of the sticker shock associated with drastic infrastructure redevelopment. Small-scale changes (of which recycling and composting are pieces) simply won’t get us to a sustainable future. Of all the choices we have in moving toward a more sustainable economy I believe this change to be the most daunting.

On the other hand, I believe that in the past few years there have been a number of aspects of the ecological paradigm that have gained increasing traction. While I see the idea of green infrastructure as a re-branding of green space and street trees. The idea of green infrastructure provides scientifically measurable benefits to the city at large, beyond recreation, for why street trees and green space are necessary. I worry, though, that taken to its extreme the argument for green infrastructure has a hidden suburban agenda within it. While most of the authors from the readings would agree that increased densities generally reduce per capita ecological footprint, Gill et al. would argue that density without adequate green infrastructure does not go far enough in addressing the impact of climate change on cities – increased density must also come with equal amounts of increased green infrastructure.

The runaway success of the Congress for New Urbanism and the demographic shift from population decline in urban centers to slow population growth have brought living in areas of increased density back into vogue in the United States. Vancouver’s Ecodensity program, and the Lloyd Crossings Design Plan, not to mention the spurt of tower construction in San Francisco, demonstrate that citizens today accept increased density in ways that ten years ago was unthinkable. The fact that there is a market for places of higher density has direct implications on ecological footprint and lifestyle. Living in cities is akin to owning a Prius: many people want others to know that they are ecologically minded, educated, and ‘being the change they want to see in the world’.

Ultimately though, I’ve come to believe that Newman and Kenworthy ultimately hold the trump card. Transportation is the key that makes higher densities and smaller ecological footprints work. Transportation and land use decision-making at the local and regional level will have the greatest impact on creating sustainable places. Not that all high density places are sustainable but that compared with the sprawl there can be little argument that per capita people living in cities produce smaller ecological footprints than those who live in the sprawl. How far acceptance of density will permeate into American culture is yet to be seen though. Whether it will simply become another option that is supplied by the market or the dominant style supplied by the market will ultimately rest with the quality of urban design around new and old centers of urban density.

Personally, I have the feeling that most Americans are waiting for technology to assuage their guilty global warming consciences so that they can keep their two acres, 2.5 cars, and 1.8 without having to live in the city.

Defining American Urbanism

"Introduction: Defining American Urbanism" from New Urbanism and American Planning by Emily Talen

Emily Talen's description of the divisions of academic and disciplinary constituting the historical conflicts of American Urbanism is one of the most insightful pieces of writing that I have read in graduate school. By the dividing the threads of urban practitioners into those who believe in incrementalism (Jane Jacobs), large scale civic improvement (City Beautiful), planned communities (Ebenezer Howard & Unwin), and regionalists (the RPAA) she creates a concise and understandable heuristic that can be as a jumping off point for discussing where a plan, practitioner, or argument falls in the history of planning and what its potential benefits and pitfalls might be considering its position on the heuristic.

She does not lose sight, though, that the goal of all of the divisions was to create the best possible human settlement forms. Very importantly she is also explicit in her inclusion of certain suburban settlements as urban forms. In Talen's opinion, and I agree with her, as long as settlement is diverse, connected, mixed, equitable, and has public space it can be called urban. I find this definition suitably inclusive while providing a set of goals with which one can use to evaluate the urban or non-urban character of a settlement.

Just as in good urban design this definition is flexible but allows for considerable refinement by the designers, community members, politicians, and business-people who affect the ultimate physical character of a settlement. Good design must be able to accept new forms and accentuate the best of old forms by acting as a superstructure that protects and promotes diversity, connectivity, mix, equity, and public space.

The first three chapters of this book are a must read for urban planning students within all concentrations of the field.

Making City Planning Work

Chapter 2 "City Planning in the Context of Local Government", in Making City Planning Work by Allan Jacobs

While this chapter does not address urban design directly it provides a thorough overview of the complexities of local government - in this case the City of San Francisco. Combined with Jon Lang's article about the competing interests that make up the discipline of urban design the two articles complement each other in describing the diffused, confusing, competing, and often times inherently contradictory setting in which urban designers must practice. The Jacobs chapter, taken in the context of the urban design practitioner makes it very clear that Lang's conclusion that successful urban designers must always be collaborative. I would take Lang's statement that urban design cannot be divorced from the political situation in which it is practiced and say that urban design is, in fact, an act of politicking. Good urban designers use empirical evidence and communication strategies to assemble supportive, or at least non actively negative, groupings that express support for a particular design. These supporters are both horizontal and vertical from local neighborhood groups to members of the Board of Supervisors and across public agencies as diverse as Public Works, the City Planning Department, and sometimes Parks and Rec. A great urban designer cannot be judged by her/his designs alone but her/his ability to get good designs implemented.

Urban Design as a Discipline & Profession

"Urban Design as a Discipline and as a Profession" by Jon Lang

Jon Lang's article about the discipline and profession of urban design is ultimately progressive arguing that the function and obligation of the urban designer is multi-faceted, holistic, collaborative, and ultimately inalienable from the political world in which it operates. He argues that it is also more than that. Urban designers have an obligation to the future and to openly communicate to all parties the positive and negative aspects of current designs and future proposed designs. The urban designer is a designer of possible physical futures who functions within a social agenda (set by government) on a backdrop of a capitalist society. Lang is correct when he asserts that in the diffused democracy of the United States it is often the market that is left to resolve the conflicts and set many of the goals with which urban planners operate. To the more progressive amongst us this may be disconcerting as it means that even the designer with rationalist empirical knowledge will not often be able to change the infrastructure and land use decisions of a particular city or region. On the other hand, I think it is safe to say that the most successful urban design paradigm in this country is descriptive rather than prescriptive. The best urban designers write codes which build the superstructure but leave the imagination up to others to fill-in. In the United States property rights are sacred and, especially in the preceding few years, we have seen the positive and negative results, depending on which side you are on, of the dance between regulation and personal property rights.

While Lang argues that urban design needs to be a collaborative 'glass box' (if I was his editor I would have chosen the word transparency but that's another issue) he never states whether designers should be up-front with their stated goals. I believe that, as Lang does argue, one could find empirical evidence to support the basic elements of good urbanism designers need to be transparent with their collaborators about what these building blocks are. Emily Talen's argument that diversity, equity, connectivity, and public space are the building blocks of urbanism - and that when these pieces come together in the right way can make good and even great urbanism - I think fits nicely as an extension of Lang's discussion about the professionalization of the discipline. Urban designers should delve deeply into these pieces, and into the interaction of these pieces in order to provide empirical evidence about what does make great urban design. In my experience as a developer - all a developer wants to hear is that certain elements will make their building more attractive to users and the public and they will be on board. If the extra costs can be amortized on the back end by higher usage and returns any developer worth her/his underwriting will incorporate it into a development.


I think the following quote summarizes Lang's definition of the role of an urban designer most succinctly:

"The function, and obligation, of the urban designer is to bring to public attention the physical design consequences of adopting one social design over another, the design possibilities for the future that might otherwise be missed, and particularly the state of the public realm for different groups of people in order to improve it or maintain its good qualities. The concern is with the future, both short term and long term."

Urban Design Blogs

Rebuilding Place in the Urban Space is definitely my favorite blog dealing with urban issues. Focused on the practice of making urban space livable and vital Richard Layman covers almost every issue that affects urban spaces.