Stories from CNU23: Zoning, Complexity, and Encouragement to Risk Mistakes

In my last post, I began recounting moments of insight from the recent 23rd annual meeting of the Congress for the New Urbanism.  Today, I’ll continue along that path.  Eventually, I’ll begin digging more deeply into the some of the topics covered during CNU 23, but for now, reporting the flashes of illumination, along with elucidation and comment as required, is my only goal.

Zoning Interrupted: In a long ago post, I dubiously reported a theory by urbanist flamethrower James Howard Kunstler that the unfortunate American architecture of the 1950s and 1960s was the result of Germany being a World War II enemy.  In Kunstler’s hypothesis, Hitler loved classical architecture, the U.S. hated Hitler, and the U.S. therefore rejected classical architecture.

I don’t claim to be an architectural historian, but suspect that Le Corbusier had a far greater role in creating the post World War II architectural aesthetic than did a rejection of everything Hitler.  I enjoy the barrages put down by Kunstler, but find that some of his more outlandish conjectures must be taken with a stiff dose of skepticism.

However, Professor Emily Talen, addressing a gathering of first-time CNU attendees (I observed from the back of the room), suggested a German war story that seemed far more credible.  She noted that it was in Germany where the concept of zoning was first invented during the 1870s.  By the 1910s when the U.S. was just beginning to dabble in zoning, the Germans had developed elaborate and effective theories about zoning.

But World War I resulted in a rupture from all ideas German, leading the U.S. to wander in the wilderness, including the failed experiment with sprawl, before gradually returning to some of the German concepts.

Permission Not Required:  Andres Duany takes pride in the great number of books that have been written by members of the CNU.  He also notes that much of the output is because of a lack of shackles, with prospective writers permitted to explore different ways of thinking about and presenting urbanism.  In his words, “Unlike the Catholic Church, being an urbanist and writing about urbanism doesn’t require official approval.”

Complexity: Both Talen and Duany made connections between CNU and CIAM, the Congrès internationaux d'architecture moderne or International Congresses of Modern Architecture.  CIAM was a leading player in the turn toward modern architecture.  Founded in 1928 (further undermining Kunstler’s theory about Hitler and modern architecture), CIAM was ineffective by the 1950s and folded in 1959.

Talen noted that, prior to CNU, CIAM had been the last organization to change the land-use world, so the founders of CNU had looked to CIAM for organizational ideas.

Duany did more to contrast the two organizations, noting that CIAM had focused on simplifying and streamlining the process of architecture, whereas CNU has embraced the ever evolving complexity of urbanism.   (This ties back to Duany’s comment about the CNU membership being fairly stable despite the continuing influx of new blood because current members tire of the complexity and migrate to organizations focusing on only one or two aspects of urbanism.)

Willingness to be Wrong: Consistent with nature of complex systems, Duany further noted that being a good urbanist means being willing to be wrong, including the possibility of making a fool of one’s self.  And he encouraged embracing the freedom to be wrong, as long as it’s done with a sense of humor.  In his words, “Unless the revolution is fun, no one comes to the second meeting.”

If the thought of being wrong is disconcerting, remember that absolute certainty about land-use solutions is what led to sprawl.  Working in incremental steps, including occasional missteps, is the only path to good solutions.  Indeed, it’s correctly called the scientific method.

Before closing, a note about Dallas.  The sculpture in the photo is present in several downtown parks.  The apparent intention is for tourists to stand in the middle, posing for photos as the “I” in “BIG”, representing the Dallas approach to life.  During my five days in town, I saw exactly one photo taken of the sculpture.  The role of the “I” was played by a young lady who was trying and failing to get into a handstand.  As a marketing gimmick, it was clever, but hadn’t taken hold.

My hope for the next post is to announce a step forward in the effort by Petaluma Urban Chat to prepare a redevelopment plan for a portion of the current Sonoma Marin Fairgrounds.  However, the timing is in the hands of another party.  I’ll make the announcement if I can.  Otherwise, I’ll continue with stories from CNU 23.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)

CNU 23: First Impressions

I’ve recently returned from the 23rd annual meeting of the Congress for the New Urbanism.  As always, I return wearied by the long days crammed with information and insights, but full of enthusiasm and new ideas that I’m eager to bring to bear on North Bay land-use issues.

My plan is for CNU 23 to dominate this blog over the next few weeks, but not to the exclusion of North Bay thinking.  I’ll try to walk the fine line between sharing my experiences and keeping an eye on local stuff.

Today, I’ll begin my thoughts from CNU 23.  Next week, I’ll offer a sampling of the best individual comments from the Congress, followed in later weeks by deeper explorations of the content.  But for today, I’ll write only about the theme that struck me most forcibly at CNU 23.

In the past, I’ve found the use of the word “Congress” to describe the group as a slightly curious, although acceptable, word choice.  In my thinking, I was using the “assembly” definition of “congress”.  But in a re-education that began with the first session I attended, I was educated that “Congress” had been selection intended in the more legislative sense.

A CNU Congress is intended as a place where the best and most insightful thinkers about land-use planning can gather to exchange perspectives, to seek common ground, and to consider compromises that give the best syntheses for contemporary urbanism.

(In a humorous note that was made several times during CNU 23, it was remembered that some of CNU founders thought that four Congresses should be sufficient to reconcile any differences and to settle on a single approach to urbanism.  Twenty-three Congresses have now been completed, the next two are already being planned for Detroit and Seattle, and the end of the Congresses is no longer discussed.)

My enhanced education began with Professor Emily Talen talking about the four disparate philosophies that have fed urbanism over the past century and continue to play roles today.  Her terms for the four streams were incremental urbanism, regional planning, zoning, and garden cities.  She traced the roots of each stream and then described the role that each has assumed in contemporary urbanism, including the tensions that remain between them.

This new and more profound understanding of the past and future of urbanism isn’t necessarily a comfortable place to be.  Talen’s vision of urbanism, although it includes bedrock principles, isn’t of a single formulation that can universally applied, but of a philosophy that must constantly evolve as new information is brought to the table and as new situations are faced.

My personal example of this thinking is the connection between climate change and urbanism.  Going back to the founding of CNU, and in my own experience as recently as 2011 when this blog was started, climate change has had a role in the urbanist conversation, but wasn’t necessarily the central factor.

This relationship between urbanism and climate change is now quickly changing, with climate change becoming perhaps the strongest argument for new urbanism.

In the abstract, I’m comfortable with this continual evolution although I find the constant sense of motion to be unsettling at times.

Following Talen, Andres Duany connected this on-going evolution to the CNU membership tallies.  As he described it, the membership total of CNU remains stable at about 3,000 people despite an annual influx of 500 new members.

Duany’s explanation is that 500 people also depart each year, many because of a difficulty of accepting the continual tension between the different urbanist streams.  His belief is that many of the former CNU members have instead joined groups that focus on single aspects of urbanism, such as complete streets or public places.

Duany doesn’t bemoan those who have moved on, but celebrates CNU as the place where cutting edge thinking continues to happen.

I look forward to sharing more about CNU 23 in the coming weeks.

Schedule Reminders

I have two calendar reminders today.

As described in my last post, the agenda for the upcoming meeting of the Petaluma Transit Advisory Committee touches upon aspects of transit funding and regional coordination beyond where the committee agendas often go.  As the committee chair, I can promise discussions that will give grist for further thought.  If this sounds interesting, please join us.  The meeting will be Thursday, May 7 at 4:00pm in the City Council Chambers at City Hall, 11 English Street.

Also, the regular monthly meeting of Petaluma Urban Chat will be Tuesday, May 12, 5:30pm at the Aqus Café, 2nd and H Streets.  I’m awaiting a couple of final confirmations so can’t yet announce the subject, but am planning a topic that I think will interest many.  For now, please put the meeting on your calendar and then look for more details two posts hence.

My next post will come from my recent travels.  My route to Dallas, where CNU 23 was held and where the photo of the public art was taken, was circuitous.  On my way to the Big D, I attended a family wedding in West Virginia, took advantage of a spare day to watch a ballgame in and to wander the downtown of Morgantown, and joined an old friend for an early evening tour of Pittsburgh.  The next post will describe a public plaza in Pittsburgh that caught my attention, although not necessarily in the way the designer intended.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)

CNU 22: The Redemption of Ebenezer Howard

A couple of posts back, in my effort to educate a commenter about the breadth of urbanist study, I noted that Ebenezer Howard was a difficult person to place in the history of urbanism.  Although never a professional planner, Howard nonetheless made significant contributions.  But at the same time, he became known, at least in some circles, as the father of suburbia.  He’s a contradictory figure who deserves a closer look.

My initial introduction to Howard was largely negative.  It may be that my early readings about urbanism, perhaps highlighted by James Howard Kunstler, weren’t in the mainstream, but my initial impressions of Howard and his book “Garden Cities of To-morrow: Experiments in Urban Planning” were derogatory.  But over time, I learned that the reality was more complex.

Howard (1850-1928) was career stenographer who spent much of his leisure time considering the problems of the city.  As did others of the same era, he decided that the urban problems were insurmountable.

In place of city life, he proposed mixed demographic towns a train ride away from the urban cores.  His towns were to be moderately dense, walkable communities, permanently separated from the city by dedicated agricultural preserves.  He believed that his garden cities would be healthier places for people to live, largely because of a renewed connection to nature.

Initially, his ideas were implemented much as he had envisioned.  Hampstead Heath, north of London, was developed in line with the concepts he laid out, as were many of the streetcar suburbs in the U.S.  (I have a cousin who recently lived contentedly in Hampstead Heath for several years.  I regret that I was unable to visit her during those years.)

But with the end of World War II, nearly two decades after Howard’s death, his concepts began to be distorted.  Levittown on Long Island is generally considered the death knell for Howard’s garden cities, with Levittown’s absence of walkability, transit orientation, and agricultural buffers.  Despite the lack of historical precedent (the fact that causes StrongTowns to describe suburbia as an “experiment”), the Levittown configuration quickly spread and became the default land-use form for much of the U.S.

And with that spread, the reputation of Ebenezer Howard declined, at least among the authors with whom I began my urbanist readings.

My first hint that Howard’s reputation might not be beyond redemption came in Ross Chapin’s book “Pocket Neighborhoods”.  Chapin made a good argument that his small, clustered homes with common grounds and communal buildings were consistent, albeit on a small scale, with Howard’s ideal.

But it was at CNU 22, the annual meeting of the Congress for the New Urbanism held in Buffalo in early June, that the reputation of Ebenezer Howard was fully expunged of guilt for Levittown and its spawn. 

First, Andres Duany, in partnership with Professor Emily Talen, proposed a unified theory of urbanism based on Howard’s “Garden Cities of To-morrow”.  He also noted that Howard’s masterwork, unlike any other book on urbanism of which Duany knew, has never been out of print since its initial publishing.

I’m still not sure I accept the Duany/Talen unified theory.  In particular, the effort to align it with a unified theory of economics seems a dubious pairing.  I’d like to think that urbanism deserves a better partner than the “dismal science”.   But it was nonetheless significant that Duany and Talen harkened all the way back to Howard to find a complete urbanist strategy that they found worth of emulation.

An even more significant endorsement of Howard at CNU 22 came from architect Robert A.M. Stern who used the conference to launch his most recent book “Paradise Planned: The Garden Suburb and the Modern City”.  (It was an odd book to push at a conference.  At 14 pounds, it was presumably of interest only to the attendees who didn’t need to check bags on their way home.)

Stern and his co-authors trace the garden suburb concept throughout history, including Howard in the lineage, and try to prove that the garden suburb still has a role in the modern world, particularly if configured more along the Howard lines than the Levittown model.

Ultimately, it was my personal knowledge of organizations that gave me a framework for grasping Howard.  As many of us know who have worked with organizations, whether public, private, or non-profit, sometimes we toss out proposals that seem inspired and on-point, only to have others, well-intended but confused, distort the implementation until we regret having raised the idea.  It’s the nature of organizations.

My final decision is to view Howard in that light.  He was truly concerned about the urban form and put forth ideas that were worthy and have stood the test of time.   Perhaps we can criticize him for his naiveté for failing to foresee that his ideas might be corrupted into a less-beneficent form, but that’s a criticism that can, with equal justification, be leveled at many of us.

At the bottom line, Howard was a dilettante, but a dilettante who put forth ideas that have stood the test of time.  I can only wish that some of us do as half as well.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)