Learning from Leon

My colleagues have quickly grown tired of my repeated references to the week I recently spent with Leon Krier while he toured Southern California to promote his new book, The Architecture of Community. The book, published by Island Press and co-edited by Dhiru Thadani and Peter Hetzel, is an updated compendium of Leon Krier’s most significant work to date. The book was included in Planetizen’s Top 10 Books published in 2009.

Leon me, when you're not strong..

Before this publication, Geoff Dyer, one of my business partners, and I had been engaged in a silly professional competition to acquire Leon’s books because it was difficult to find his many brilliant books and projects for sale in United States book stores. My rare French copy of Architecture Rationnelle put me in the lead until Leon autographed Geoff’s copy of Architecture: Choice or Fate, led with “To the very talented…”

With a stroke of Leon’s pen, Geoff now sits comfortably in the lead.

Leon came to San Diego to give a lecture on architecture and urbanism to 250 interested people in a beautiful Balboa Park theater and then to 200 excitable students and faculty at the NewSchool of Architecture and Design. Local reporters, planning directors, and political leaders heard, met and learned from Leon throughout the week. San Diego Union-Tribune and San Diego City Beat wrote about his time in the city.

After San Diego, Leon then spoke to a class at Arizona State University with Emily Talen and Nan Ellin. He then joined Stefanos Polyzoides in Pasadena to discuss architecture and urbanism at the invitation of the Mayor of Pasadena. Pasadena Star News and Pasadena blogs Inside Socal and Media Bistro covered the visit.

The lessons learned from Leon while touring the Southwest were varied, complex and meaningful. The more general themes surprised me most. For example, upon picking him up from the airport, I immediately drove Leon to the latest modernist infill project in my turn-of-the-century streetcar neighborhood. The villa savoye copy had been in Architecture Record as the local architect is well known.

Upon passing by the building slowly, I was expecting an affirmation of my disgust when Leon says–disappointingly– “It’s good.” My eyes widened and my hands gestured wildly as I explained that the fenestration was backwards, the building completely out of context, and the urbanism only existent in materials and scale. Leon agreed that all were true, but that for a modernist building it was a very good example.

The lesson being, “If you do modernism (or anything for that matter)… then do it well.” He is correct. I forget how difficult it is to get buildings and places built. He said that to build anything in today’s toxic environment (naturally and politically) was laudable and then to build it well was meaningful. So, I relaxed a little about a building I had previously wished acts of God upon and drove Leon downtown.

Driving past the single core of the city, townhouse-wrapped, Vancouver-model towers proliferate San Diego’s downtown cityscape. I explained the ugly politics that gave additional entitlement to buildings that had green roofs rather than civic spaces. I was expecting a classic Leon Krier diatribe on the lack of value Vancouver brings to the New Urbanist dialog and both the ecological and social failure of high-rise towers as a building type. Instead, he thought San Diego’s towers were somewhat playful and fun. He explained that while towers are regretful, these had an element of lightness and amusement that made them easier to live with than those being stamped across Vancouver and the east coast.

Finally, he quickly surmised that our monotonous grid must become more complex. As he had pointed out years ago in Houses, Palaces, and Cities, the grid is rural in structure with its visual terminus toward infinity. A simple ‘center’ was needed in key locations to ‘urbanize’ the neighborhoods within the monotonous grid. Due to the width of San Diego’s typical streets, 80’, a majority of the infill retrofit could occur within city right-of-way and include civic buildings.

Therefore, mostly what I learned from Leon (besides the fact that driving around was much less informative than walking) was to approach places and projects with a positive, optimistic attitude in order to work towards a better future. Why is this simple lesson meaningful? To see this man remain positive after 35 years of being vilified in our modern design world is very inspirational. While his professional lectures are polemic and absolute, his professional perspective is equally optimistic and conclusive.

The following are Leon Krier’s recent drawings of how to create more urban centers in our more rural grid:

           

           

–Howard Blackson

Miami Just the Tip of the Iceberg for Form Based Coding

When Miami, Florida adopted a SmartCode on October 22 by a 4-1 vote, an important step was taken for the global knowledge base of placemaking. This zoning reform is clearly a turning point away from the energy-intensive, environmentally-destructive, auto-centric development patterns of the 20th century. Miami 21 represents the “Miami of the 21st Century,” and takes into account all of the integral factors necessary to make each area within the City a unique, vibrant place to live, learn, work and play. The initiative is the largest mandatory form-based and transect-based unified development ordinance in history.

While this is a massive step for the 4th most populous urbanized area in the U.S., Miami is not alone. About 200 other cities are in the process of zoning reform that utilizes form-based codes to reverse the negative effects of use-based zoning. Use-based codes separate the uses into pods of commercial, residential, industrial, and agricultural. And generally requires an automobile to get from one pod to another. Form-based codes allows a mixture of compatible uses that enable neighborhoods to develop again, nodally along transit corridors.

Form Based Coding's thousand points of light.

To get an idea of where all form-based codes are happening, Collaborative Google Maps show the lay of the land. These maps provide an informal support group of SmartCodes and other form-based codes at some point along the process of code writing, adoption, and implementation.

While most of these other initiatives are not on the scale of Miami, several are close, including El Paso, Texas; Denver, Colorado; San Antonio, Texas; Montgomery, Alabama; Memphis, Tennessee; Nashville, Tennessee; Phoenix, Arizona; St. Petersburg, Florida; and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. On the other end of rural-to-urban transect is the “New Ruralism” that is occurring among the towns and villages that are seeking to deal with sprawling placeless-ness through form-based codes that protect their rural character.

The idea is that by learning from the experience of others, ideas can grow more quickly, and the continental community consensus building power can increase. The maps allow individuals to change their own information, however the general format includes:
- A description of the work at hand
- Links to the draft or final codes
- Illustrations and maps
- Project, client, and consultant websites
- General statistics on adopted codes, including population and acreage
- Links to news articles regarding each initiative

Currently, the maps contain information on 41 adopted SmartCodes, 51 SmartCodes in progress, and 97 other Form-Based Codes. This is not an exhaustive list, as new initiatives begin every day, so everyone is encouraged to add their own work.

Check them all out:

SmartCodes Adopted
SmartCodes in Progress
Other Form Based Codes

Green markers indicate SmartCodes adopted, yellow SmartCodes in progress, and purple other Form-Based Codes.

Additionally, TND maps give details on projects that are being designed in form-based development patterns. While many of these projects were done without the benefit of form-based codes but rather as Planned Unit Developments (PUDs), others are designed under adopted form-based codes. These maps are intentionally not a ranking or review system, however turning on satellite view and zooming in is an instructive virtual tour on the successes and challenges of thse developments.

All of these maps may be opened simultaneously, to get a regional idea of the sorts of initiatives that are occurring across the continent. When traveling to a particular region, the maps become a tour guide for progressive urbanism and zoning reform.

TNDs US – West
TNDs US – East
TNDs US – Florida & Caribbean
TNDs Canada

For TNDs, blue markers indicate greenfield development, and turquoise for infill, brownfield and grayfield.

– Hazel Borys

A Prescription for Healthy Places

The not-so-good news persists: The continuing economic woes, including long-term concerns about housing, infrastructure, and transportation policy. The complications (to put it mildly) of climate change. And the crisis in public health.

It’s no wonder the whole country feels a little under the weather.

The cure for what ails us?

Which is why we think it’s clever that famed designer/planner Dhiru Thadani came up with the cool graphic to the left to remind us that there is a prescription for what ails us. Or, at least, that there’s an approach to healthier living that should be included in national strategies for renewal.

Not coincidentally, that theme “Rx for Healthy Places,” provides the sub-title for CNU18, the annual gathering of the Congress for the New Urbanism, which will be held in Atlanta, May 19-22, 2010. The healthy places angle gets an extra shot of credibility because of the active participation in CNU18 of the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The public health connection to New Urbanist principles has always been implied. It’s important these days, especially during a heated debate over the future of health care, to make it explicit. The most authoritative link-up between public health and land use planning is “Urban Sprawl and Public Health: Designing, Planning, and Building for Healthy Communities” by Howard Frumkin, director of CDC’s National Center for Environmental Health. Dr. Frumkin will be honorary chair of CNU18.

Adding to the work of CDC researchers and epidemiologists who study links between physical health and environmental factors is an increasing body of work on mental health and social conditions, especially with regard to social isolation. Remember “Bowling Alone,” Robert Putnam’s 2001 best seller about “social capital” and community? That book inspired a lot of discussion in New Urbanist circles. And research has continued to connect isolation and ill health. Here’s a recent L.A. Times column on the topic (thanks to Ann Daigle for the link).

And to read more about the book that inspired the column, “Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection” by John T. Cacioppo and William Patrick, go here.

We’ll be reporting more and more about what’s beginning to shape up as an historic gathering in Atlanta next May. So keep coming back.

– Ben Brown

Infrastructure v. Economy: The Battle Continues

In the battle for pedestrian-oriented streets, it’s clear that walkability isn’t the only thing at stake. The heavy economic and environmental burden of auto-centric roads and utilities is starting to become painfully obvious. Both in scholarly research and the daily management decisions by local governments.

The grass is always greener when it's slowly destroying your infrastructure.

While compact development patterns are cheaper to build, they’re also cheaper to maintain. During a meeting of midwestern county governments last month, it was reported that most midwestern paved county roads soon will be turned back into gravel. This midwestern trend has been escalating over the last 12 months, as counties grapple with dwindling budgets. Repaving one mile of road costs about $120,000, while grinding it up into a gravel road costs $4,000, according to an article from Kalamazoo News. Lowering the cost 30 times leaves little choice for many strapped county governments.

From a more metropolitan perspective, this summer Calgary estimated compact development patterns would save them $11.2 billion in infrastructure costs, making it 33% less expensive to build the roads, transit, water, recreation, fire, and schools that it expects to need over the next 60 years.

The US EPA commissioned Morris Beacon Design this summer for a study on the subject, indicating TND infrastructure costs 32% to 47% less than conventional development patterns. Calgary pegs the lower end of this spectrum.

Taking a more holistic view of economy, energy, and emissions, The Transportation Research Board released “Driving and the Built Environment: The Effects of Compact Development on Motorized Travel, Energy Use, and CO2 Emissions” this month. This report details the effects of land development patterns and vehicle miles traveled (VMT) on petroleum use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. While the findings are completely obvious to urbanists, it’s good to see some quantifications through the scholarly attentions of this 180 page study. The primary findings are:

1: Compact development reduces VMT.
2: Doubling residential density while increasing nearby employment, transit, and mixed use can decrease VMT by 25%.
3: Compact, mixed-use development produces reductions in energy consumption and CO2 emissions.
4: These reductions will grow over time.
5: The biggest obstacle is zoning — regional and state governments need to take a stronger role in land use planning.

More governments than ever are starting to step up to this plate, to enact the sorts of zoning reforms that can:
1. Decrease their costs of building and maintaining infrastructure,
2. Decrease the amount of oil and natural gas required to fuel their local economies, and
3. Cap their local greenhouse gas emissions.

Here’s an informal support group of some of the governments currently undertaking exactly the sort of zoning reform that can achieve these lofty yet expedient goals.

– Hazel Borys

Everything’s Connected: Health, Healthy Aging, Community Design

Among the most encouraging trends in Smart Growth is an emerging consensus that good community design can address a bunch of issues at once. Which makes for much more comprehensive, cost-effective strategies to match the complexity of challenges before policy-makers.

Take, for instance, the agendas of separate entities concentrating exclusively on topics such as public health, environmental protection, energy conservation, and aging issues. Just in the last few months:

• The Environmental Protection Agency has published “a guide to Smart Growth and Active Aging” called Growing Smarter, Living Healthier );
• The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which has its own Healthy Community Design Initiative, will lend its name and expertise to the 18th national gathering of the Congress for the New Urbanism in Atlanta next May (more about that in a separate post);
• And the U.S. Climate Change Science Program published an “Analysis of the Effects of Global Change on Human Health and Welfare and Human Systems.”

Those of us who fall under the category of “aging Boomers” are going to be particularly interested in how this confluence affects both our personal and professional lives. Thankfully, healthy aging is becoming an increasingly hot topic and seems likely to offer some of the most immediate opportunities for unifying strategies.

In blog posts below, we’ve reported on how senior co-housing might fit into planning for New Urbanist TNDs and infill. And we talked about DPZ’s landmark Lifelong Communities Charrette for the Atlanta Regional Commission here and here.

The complete report from the DPZ/ARC effort in Atlanta is now up on the ARC’s website, and it’s a must-see for planners and municipalities concerned about how to work aging-in-place planning into other goals – such as retrofitting dead malls and creating infill TODs. Check it out here.

With this convergence of Big Ideas gaining momentum, what’s the next step? Scaling up. The bad news in this good news/bad news scenario is that the challenges of demographics, energy depletion, and climate change are bigger than any effort to confront them so far. Listen particularly to the ARC’s Kathryn Lawler in the video below, as she joins other presenters from a recent Healthy Aging conference in Chapel Hill, NC.

– Ben Brown

And Now the Rest of the Story: Stewart Brand Promotes Urbanism, Including Slums

This could be the next must-get book for Smart Growthers, New Urbanists, and lots of us who bought into the eco-techno connection decades ago. Stewart Brand, creator of The Whole Earth Catalog and author more recently of How Buildings Learn (Penguin, 1994) – which Jane Jacobs called “a classic and probably a work of genius” – will have another big title out in the next week.

It’s called Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto. And you know how New Urbanists love manifestos.

Brand’s new work seems capable of raising eyebrows. In fact, it hit the No. 7 spot among “12 Shocking Ideas that Will Change the World” in the October issue of Wired magazine. In the realm of not-so-shocking, at least for Smart Growth types, is Brand’s championing of cities as good for the environment. More provocative maybe are his positive views about genetic engineering and squatter shanty towns

“We made the mistake of romanticizing villages, and we won’t need to make that mistake again,” Brand told Wired. “But the main thing is not to bulldoze the slums. . . That’s where vast numbers of humans – slum dwellers – are doing urban stuff in new and amazing ways. And hell’s bells, there are a billion of them!”

– Ben Brown

Call for Cool Plans

New Urban Guild plans Southern Living plan book

Miami-based architect and author Steve Mouzon, founder of the The New Urban Guild, has made the deal he and the Guild have been working toward for years. Southern Living magazine, arguably the most influential shelter mag in the southeastern US, is going to publish Guild collections of TND-worthy homes. And Mouzon is inviting all comers to submit designs.

Read all about it here. 

“We’re looking for a wide range of house plan sizes, from cottages to mansions,” says Mouzon. “And we’re also looking for many types of plans, including side yard houses, courtyard houses, carriage houses, townhouses, mews units, live/work units, and Katrina Cottages. There’s only one type we don’t need — ordinary houses — as in ordinary suburban houses with garages in front, facing the street. There are enough of those plans out there already.”

Plans will be selected by a jury of Guild members. “It’s a tough jury, so only a fraction of plans submitted are likely to be selected,” says Mouzon. “But that’s what it takes to make sure this is the best collection of traditional neighborhood homes ever assembled.”

Go here for plan submission requirements. And if you want to see Mouzon’s narration of two of his own designs, Katrina Cottages constructed for Cottage Square in Ocean Springs, MS, check out this:

Tweet, Flick, Whatever: More Help or More Noise?

CNU 17, DENVER, CO – Adapt or die.

That Darwinist admonition has been invoked to justify tons of brilliant and tons of stupid strategies for coping with change. It’s applied these days to the rise of Web-enabled social networking tools like Facebook and Twitter. And since New Urbanists are early adopters of new approaches to conceptualizing and coping with change, there’s a lot of conversation going on right now about how to – and whether to – employ these new tools.

On June 10, here at the 17^th annual Congress for the New Urbanism, Bill Lennertz, executive director of the National Charrette Institute, and Ken Snyder, a founder of PlaceMatters, led a half-day workshop on “Hi-Tech, Hi-Touch Public Meeting Facilitation Tools for Charrettes.” Below, Lennertz describes how the NCI is exploring the strategic possibilities and the gadgetry of social networking tools.

The path to merging public engagement strategies and the rapidly evolving Web tools is not going to be clear anytime soon. We don’t have sorting mechanisms just yet that help us decide whether a new tool enables a paradigm shift or is just another distraction from purposeful planning. We might speed our adaptation if we paid attention to the discussion going on in the realm of the techies who invented all this stuff.

New Urbanists were among the first to see the implications of crowd-sourcing strategies that imitate natural networks. Wired mag co-founder Kevin Kelley has been on the must-read list, first with New Rules for the New Economy, and more recently with Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, & the Electronic World. Kelly has a provocative piece in Wired suggesting that these Web technologies are enabling the “new socialism.”

Even more on point with regard to the social implications of Web-enabled systems is NYU adjunct professor and interactive technology consultant Clay Shirky. Shirky provides a readable intro to this new territory in Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations. And you can watch Shirky walk an audience through some of the ideas on youtube:

One of the essential takeaways from Shirky’s work is the notion that, with social networking, we are likely talking about a challenge of “different” rather than just “more.” In another video, he makes the key point that our frustration with what we call information overload is actually about a breakdown in the filters we’ve evolved for determining the value of information input. Instead of fretting over the redesign of old-era filtering mechanisms that focused on editing/censoring/gate keeping at information sources, we must develop new ones on our end of the information stream to cope with what is likely to be a permanent condition of accelerating access to everything, all the time, everywhere.

What that implies for New Urbanists’ adaptation strategies for public engagement is that we have to first recognize that this new environment is the one in which we’ll be operating and that our responsibilities for refining our own filtering systems and for helping clients and citizens develop theirs will only grow.

– Ben Brown

New Urbanist Cohousing: Another Arrow in Developers’ Quivers?

CNU 17, DENVER, CO – New Urbanists attending the 17^th annual Congress of New Urbanism gathering in Denver will spend the next four days talking about alls sorts of overlapping , interconnected challenges: The uncertain economy, the implications of climate change, the impact of an aging society on land use planning, to name a few. About an hour away in Boulder are intriguing examples of how designers, developers, and a forward-thinking housing authority might tackle some of those issues.

The Holiday community on Broadway, about 10 minutes from Boulder’s downtown, is a ten-year-old New Urbanist development built on an old drive-in movie site. The local housing authority, Boulder Housing Partners, acquired the property in 1997, and invited five local developers to provide 300-plus units, 40 percent of which had to hit affordability benchmarks.

The Holiday community's co-housing units.

The general plan – retail and offices fronting Broadway, live-works, town houses, duplexes, and single family units of different scales deeper within the project – would be familiar to most New Urbanists. What sets it apart are two embedded cohousing neighborhoods – Wild Sage, a 34-unit multi-generational neighborhood, and Silver Sage Village, a 16-unit elder cohousing cluster.

Cohousing is an imported-from-Denmark approach to community building that reverses the usual relationship between resident and developer by encouraging the formation of a virtual neighborhood of people who work out how they intend to live with one another before they move in, or even choose the setting in which they’ll live. They maintain separate living units but share maintenance chores and a  common house where they dine together at least a couple times a week. It’s part commune, part condo, all community. For a more complete explanation and list of cohousing communities in the US, go here.

Before the economy went into the dumps, cohousing was attracting more and more interest, particularly elder cohousing, which seems a far more attractive way to age in place than in a car-centric suburb.  Last month, USA TODAY’s Haya el Nasser profiled life at Silver Sage. And the movement is still big enough to stage its own national get-together, June 24-28, in Seattle.

That appeal to community makes cohousing a natural ally, a potential nesting component, in New Urbanist projects all over the country.  Jim Leach, president of Wonderland Development Company credits the fast start of the whole Holiday project to the enthusiasm Wild Sage’s residents brought to the project.  And demand for units in Silver Sage Village boosted market-rate prices over the $500,000 mark for some units.

Is this something developers, who could use all the jump starts they can find in the current environment, should be paying more attention to?

Certainly Jim Leach and architect Bryan Bowen, who designed the two Holiday cohousing clusters, think so. 

– Ben Brown

Now What? CNU 17 Addresses the New Era Economy

The irony is unavoidable. Interest in Smart Growth and New Urbanist topics has never been higher. Check out this May 2 column in the Washington Post; or David Brooks’ opinion piece in the New York Times from May 4. Yet the economic downturn has sucked the energy out of innovative projects in both private and public sectors. Lots of will, less way. At least for the moment.

And this is the moment in which the 17^th national gathering of the Congress for the New Urbanism takes place. CNU 17 begins June 10 in Denver. Early registration ends today.

Before the bottom dropped out of the economy, CNU attendees were expected to be talking a lot about greening the movement. Now, the hot topics will be about adapting to new realities.

While the downturn may seem like a reason to skip this year’s gathering, it may be the best reason for scraping together the resources to get to Denver. If ever there was a time to share great ideas, this is that time.

Already the energy is producing cool stuff, particularly the award-winning video that makes the convincing argument that cul de sacs spell the end of civilization as we know it. Here it is:

We’ll see you there. If you have time, check out the discussion I’m moderating at 4:00 p.m. on Saturday, June 13. It’s an invitation to  “Embrace the Convergence” between the goals of creating compact, walkable comunnities and strategies for addressing public health, environmental, and demographic challenges. On the panel: EPA’s Tim Torma, the CDC’s Dee Merriam, and former AARP staffer Michael O’Neal.

- Ben Brown

Prince of Wales Argues (Again) for ‘Bottom Up’ Design

Addresses British Architects Who Aren’t Always Big Fans

Twenty-five years after he prodded the Royal Institute of British Architects on the group’s 150th anniversary to consider making a little room for traditional approaches to architecture and planning, HRH The Prince of Wales appeared before the group on another anniversary to clarify the message. Though it’s not likely unrepentant modernists in the group saw it as a reframing of the issue.

Connecting us to our place in the world through an "organic architecture."

“To my mind,” said the Prince, “that earlier speech also addressed a much more fundamental division than that between Classicism and Modernism: namely the one between “top-down” and “bottom-up” approaches to architecture. Today, I’m sorry to say, there still remains a gulf between those obsessed by forms (and Classicists can be as guilty of this as Modernists, Post-Modernists, or Post-Post-Modernists), and those who believe that communities have a role to play in design and planning.”

Maybe “organic” would be a less controversial way to express his vision than “traditional,” he allowed. “I know that the term ‘organic architecture’ acquired a certain specific meaning in the twentieth century . . , but perhaps it is time to recover its older meaning and use it to describe traditional architecture that emerges from a particular environment or community – an architecture bound to place, not to time. In this way we might defuse the too-easy accusation that such an approach is ‘old-fashioned,’ or not sufficiently attuned to the zeitgeist.”

Since The Prince of Wales has been the most ardent advocate of the New Urbanism in Europe, practitioners in the States will be interested in his current take on this continuing debate about form. See an edited video of his speech before the Royal Institute and a transcript here.

- Ben Brown

“Best Practices Guide” Debuts to Glowing Reviews

4th Edition of New Urban News Book Just Issued

Here’s what got our attention: Miami architect/author/New Urbanist provocateur Steve Mouzon says the 2009 “Best Practices Guide“ from the New Urban News “just might be the most useful single book on the New Urbanism I have ever seen.” (Read Steve’s complete review here). That’s hefty praise coming from Mouzon, who is famously cranky about architectural details and planning practices.

The latest edition of the "New Urbanism Best Practices Guide" reflects the movement's ever increasing, and ever-improving, body of knowledge.

The book, by NUN editors Robert Steuteville and Philip Langdon and “special contributors,” runs more than 400 pages and utilizes some 800 illustrations and tables. Which bolsters the claim that this is indeed “the definitive reference on new urban ideas, practices, and projects.”

Among the new chapters are ones on architectural styles and building types, land development, parking, and health and aging. And the editors have revised and updated chapters that have to do with revitalizing cities and towns, retail, the workplace, civic spaces, marketing, finance, transit, and affordability.

The price: $129, plus shipping and handling; $99, plus shipping and handling for New Urban New subscribers and members of CNU. Student price is $79, plus shipping and handling. Download the order form from the NUN website.

- Ben Brown 

Next Step in Reforming Transportation Policy: T4 America’s “Blueprint”

Advocates for a different approach to transportation planning haven’t been delirious about the reluctance of the feds and DOTs to depart from business as usual when it comes to investing stimulus money. But there’s another chance.

All aboard. It's time to depart from business as usual.

Transportation for America, a coalition of SmartGrowth-oriented organizations, is proposing a forward-looking agenda for the upcoming debate on reauthorizing the Transportation Act. T4 America’s “Blueprint” calls for Congress to:

• Articulate a National Vision, Objectives, and Performance Targets for the national transportation program and hold state and local transportation agencies accountable for demonstrable progress toward goals including safety, efficiency, environment, health and equity.
• Restructure and consolidate federal programs for greater modal integration, with a focus on completing the second half of the national transportation system, providing more transportation options for all Americans and creating seamless transportation systems that meet the unique needs and connect metropolitan regions, small towns, and rural areas.
• Empower states, regions, and cities with direct transportation funding and greater flexibility to select projects, using carrots and sticks to incentivize wise transportation investments and in return require demonstrated performance on meeting national objectives.
• Reform how we pay for the transportation system and create a Unified Transportation Trust Fund that would achieve balanced allocations of federal funds in a portfolio of rail, freight, highway, public transportation, and non-motorized transportation investments.

For an overview of the full report, go here. And for the executive summary, click here.

- Ben Brown

What We’re Reading: Leon Krier’s “Architecture of Community”

In 1984, Bruce Springsteen told Rolling Stone Magazine that he had albums of unreleased songs and that one day he would “put those out because there was good material in there.” In 1998, he did just that, releasing a beautiful 4-disc set of unreleased songs. Being a long-time devotee, I was more than a little impressed that, though it took fifteen years, I could still count on Springsteen to keep his word.

A "handy publication" indeed.

During a 2003 charrette, as I asked Mr. Leon Krier to sign my well-worn copy of Architecture: Choice or Fate (Andreas Papadakis Publisher, 1998), he noted that he hadn’t seen too many of his books in the States. In my lame attempt to impress Mr. Krier (no, I didn’t tell him I was a Springsteen fan) I told him that my copy had been found at Powell’s Book Store in Portland and I then began to recite my complete collection of Leon Krier books–L.K. Houses, Palaces, Cities (Academy, 1984) and Rational Architecture (AAM, 1978)–and where I had found them. Mr. Krier gently interrupted me to say something about the need for a “handy publication of my architectural and planning ideas.”

As quoted from the book’s Author’s Note above, Mr. Krier has kept to his word and done just that. The Architecture of Community is a seamless read and a comprehensive publication of his architectural and planning ideas crafted over 40 years. The 443 pages read quickly, as more than half of the book is filled with his poignant cartoons, vignettes, and parti. Eagerly, I read the book over the weekend, trying to not bend the corners or dint the dust jacket.

However, the book’s pristine condition will not last, as I have already begun to use the book as my primary reference guide for architecture and urban composition and theory. I tend to view my daily professional life as tilting at windmills of conventional architecture and urban design, and Mr. Krier’s pithy cartoons lighten this perception, both literally and figuratively. This book contains well-known images from past books as well as new images, photographs, projects, observations and captions.

A missed opportunity in the book is any direct reference to his polemic and inspirational debates with Peter Eisenmann in 1983, which were summed up with this barb, “You can’t, but I can,” in response to Peter stating, “Leon, come on, you cannot build this way anymore today!” Understanding that Mr. Krier’s theoretical position is detailed throughout the book, those series of debates, in my opinion, helped to shape what design means to the United States of America.

As discussed in his chapter, The Modernity of Traditional Architecture, “Traditional architectural forms derive from and are conditioned by the use of natural materials.” Today, with sustainability having moved from long-time trend status (such as Watershed Planning and Livable Communities) to radical movement (such as Modernism and New Urbanism), Mr. Krier’s long-time focus on ecological planning and humane buildings is rising up to meet our contemporary needs.

The book is published by Island Press (ISBN-13:978-1-59726-578-2). Through simple, matter-of-fact, black and white text and graphics, it comprehensively illustrates how Mr. Krier’s work has consistently delved deeper into the timelessness of building “good and elegant human settlements” with new chapters (The Architectural Tuning of Settlements) assembled upon the old (Aspects of Modernity). And, his steady, reliable, dependable and honest focus on shaping our buildings, neighborhoods and towns towards an architecture and urbanism that are simply beautiful is to be celebrated with the reading of Leon Krier’s new book.

- Howard Blackson

Mouzon Green Home Design Featured in WSJ

Contrasts “Original Green” vs. “Gadget Green”

Even before green building gathered momentum, Miami architect Steve Mouzon was determined to change the focus of the discussion. Green shouldn’t be just about the individual house in the here and now, he argued; it has to be about the broader community over time. Design and construction should build on lessons from the past and lay the groundwork for a sustainable future.

That perspective led him to an award-winning book, A Living Tradition: Architecture of the Bahamas, and to the continuing refinement of the idea of “Original Green.” “Original Green,” as opposed to “Gadget Green,” focuses on vernacular practices honed over time to shape highly efficient and much loved structures that adapt and endure over generations.

Must green living fully rely on technological invention?

This past January in Miami, a design group founded by Mouzon, the New Urban Guild, convened in Miami to talk about producing a series of ideas for dwellings for a new era in America. The discussion was about efficiencies of space and about Original Green-style sustainability. Now, one of the first products of that 2008 discussion, a Mouzon design for a neighborhood-friendly green home, was among four ideas featured in a special section of the April 27, 2009, Wall Street Journal.

Mouzon’s concept shares at least one approach with the work of the other four architects. Its scale is relatively small, especially compared with McMansion-style mega-houses. Everybody, it seems, is coming to understand that reducing volume is one sure route to greater energy efficiency. Mouzon’s design fits easily on a standard 50 X 100 urban lot. Its 1,200-square-feet of air-conditioned space utilizes less than half the site. The highly detailed outside rooms encourage living a great part of the time in the outdoors, even in the sub-tropical climate of the South Atlantic coast, where Mouzon chose to locate his theoretical lot. (Original Green, Mouzon will point out, is not a one-size-fits-all approach; designs have to be customized to regional climate to take advantage of time-honored vernacular for conserving energy and achieving creature comfort.)

While Mouzon doesn’t shy away from the latest advancements in solar and wind technologies, he avoids expensive, high-maintenance gadgetry in order to focus on much older – even ancient techniques – to achieve sustainability: Shading eaves, sleeping porches,  cross ventilation, and “sails” to direct cooling breezes in the gardens. In this design, homeowners can live 100 percent off the energy grid. Enough food can be grown in the gardens or harvested from the chicken coop or tilapia pool to sustain a small family. Yet nothing about the house prevents it from nesting comfortably in a neighborhood.

You can read more about the design for the WSJ story on Mouzon’s website here.