"The essence of urbanism"
Posted December 21, 2010 in Living Sustainably
My friend and fellow blogger/lawyer/urbanist/photographer Chuck Wolfe has another provocative new post on his myurbanist site: using the fabulously scenic Italian villages of Cinque Terre to illustrate the principles of walkability, connectedness, and grounding that make a community's built environment especially hospitable to the human spirit. As ever, Chuck asks his viewer/reader to think about what she sees and examine the implications:
"What if there were five neighborhoods connected by a trail? Or better yet, as illustrated from the Cinque Terre in northwest Italy, five towns, all self-contained, but symbiotic, micro-economies also connected by footpath, rail and water? What if they all had the magical amenities of street, square and housing within, terraced agriculture and spiritual retreats in the near-hinterlands? . . .
"Such regional “artifacts” raise the real question–need such places be facade-based shells, largely touristic?"
It gets better. See Chuck's full post, "gift-wrapping the essence of urbanism" on myurbanist.
Move your cursor over the images for credit information.
Kaid Benfield writes (almost) daily about community, development, and the environment. For more posts, see his blog's home page.
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Comments
Victor Dover — Dec 21 2010 10:38 AM
OK, you asked for this one.. Were Cinque Terre to be proposed today, would it pass the challenging site-selection tests my friend Kaid called for in LEED-ND? (I know it's a rhetorical question, but I can't resist, knowing you're on vacation, and your defenses are down). (And don't say "Cinque Terre is ok since it has rail"-- check that steep sloping terrain, and the distance from the edge development to the 'water body.')
Kaid @ NRDC — Dec 21 2010 10:47 AM
Because a place was built, has survived, and is loved does not mean it would be environmentally sound to build it again in the same place, knowing what we know today.
The lower ninth ward in New Orleans deserves to be rebuilt because of the people and investment represented there, but in hindsight it was not environmentally sound to build it there. And that, I suppose, is one of the few differences between the philosophies of new urbanism and environmentally oriented smart growth. We agree on almost everything else. Have a great hioliday.
Chuck Wolfe — Dec 21 2010 11:09 AM
And from a fly on the wall--the question was a bit anticipated in the earlier companion piece on hill towns referenced at the post :) Inspiration has its contexts...
Victor Dover — Dec 21 2010 12:14 PM
I accept your answer, actually, and it's a good answer indeed, for most situations. We're on the same side. So let's move on to the advanced question. Assuming we agreed on some place suitable for development of new settlements, perhaps one justified by a rail investment of the kind that legitimates and links Cinque Terre: If we proposed its pattern to be not one but FIVE distinct,dense, holistic settlements of this sort, separated by natural lands and water bodies or wide bands of agriculture and silvaculture, in the way we see in Cinque Terre, we would inevitably be attacked for extending infrastructure inefficiently, fragmenting the preserves ("too many rips and tears"), and failing to group all the neighborhoods tightly enough together to form a more sizable and cohesive market for local commerce and community services. Yet this patttern is precisely the wonder of Cinque Terre. Please comment. (Readers might be interested to know that I used Cinque Terre in one of my failed attempts to argue exactly this point in LEED-ND deliberations.)
Kaid @ NRDC — Dec 21 2010 01:02 PM
Victor, now our difference may be that I think it unrealistic to expect LEED-ND to be useful in identifying and rewarding all kinds of good development. To the contrary, it can identify and reward only those kinds of development that can be described with standards so that we *know* them to be superior according to the intersection of values among the three founding constituencies.
Will that leave some good developments out, because we don't have enough experience yet to be confident in describing them? Will it leave some good development out because standards can't be sufficiently articulated to separate the superior in that category from the average or bad examples? Absolutely. In building a system that honors superior development, we should start conservatively and evolve over time as we learn more. And, in the meantime, we should respect that our points of confident agreement, while considerable, do have some limits.
Victor Dover — Dec 22 2010 09:08 AM
Thanks for te thoughtful reply. Merry Christmas!
Kaid @ NRDC — Dec 22 2010 11:00 AM
And the same to you, my friend!