I don't really disagree with anything you say here. As I said in my response on my own blog, success is all a matter of which yardstick you use.
But I am curious: How much of New Urbanism success is because of its differences with other design philosophies and how much is due to the general real estate boom? For a long time developers could sell any kind of trash and it would be snapped up in many areas of the country.
Apeman,
I very much enjoy your responses on your blog, and your points are well considered.
As an answer to your question, I agree that developers can sell any kind junk and find takers, all in the name of reaping the future fruits of economic development. While developers are talented number-crunchers, they often are shallow intellectuals. They are receptive to any trendy architectual/urban theory that can benefit their sales pitch financial backers and planning boards. As I read my monthly issue of the magazine from the Urban Land Institute, it seems that much of the content is mere boosterism than an kind of debate on the merits of what developer projects featured.
As I've written in the post, I think New Urbanism is a bit of different animal than the other preceding movements. For one, it appeals what the general American cultural marketplace tends to like and it feeds off the power of nostalgia that is uniquely prevalent in American culture. One of the most convincing points Post-modernist iconoclasts have made was that the Modernist International Style was the first and only style that was never truly embraced by the public at large, and many of its most celebrated buildings and urban spaces have been acrimoniously received.
(cont.)
Whatever popularity Modernism has enjoyed in America has been limited to office developers and a wealthy subset of people who fill the modernist condo towers and furnishing them with pieces from Design Within Reach or West Elm.
A beautiful Modernist building can't be executed cheaply and the craft required to do it well is much higher than that of your common 2x4 wood construction. Thus, it is difficult to make minimalist Modernism a profitable style.
New Urbanism is a lot less complicated, in that it uses traditional wood frame construction and makes it a bit more affordable than fancier condo buildings made of concrete, steel, and super-expensive glass curtain wall systems.
New Urbanism is less about the integrity of interior spaces than it is about an exterior 'look'. That is where much of the cost comes from and unfortunately that it is where the developer will cut corners. Don't look too closely at the detailing of the exterior facades since many of them are poorly finished.
Corbusier,
Thanks for the reply. I am sorry that it has taken me so long to reply, but life has a way of intervening in unfavorable ways.
As usual, I am struck by how much I agree with what you say while at the same time marveling at how much our perspectives differ. If you see Modernism as the natural thing to compare to New Urbanism then everything you say is spot on. But it never even entered my little blue collared mind to use Modernism as a scale by which to measure New Urbanism.
I hate Modernism with such a passion that comparing it to another architectural style seems like an unnecessary insult. Furthermore, the very nature of the Modernism ideology means that it can never be the style of the masses as you rightly point out. It is economically impossible, not to mention that most common people have better sense than to want one of those white elephants.
On the other hand, it is at least theoretically possible that the principles of New Urbanism could become a realistic type of architecture for the average person. To my mind, then, the natural comparison for New Urbanism would be to the commercial architecture that is being put up where most Americans live. In other words, can New Urbanism replace strip malls, subdivisions, and Mc-mansions?
The problem I have with New Urbanism is not the theory that underlies it, but how it works out in practice. I don't see where New Urbanism has any benefits in practice that normal old commercial architecture does not have. Thus, I have a hard time imagining that developers are selling anything more than a chance to be hip when they build New Urbanism structures.
Slapping the New Urbanism label on a development might increase the appeal to the upwardly mobile yuppies that are willing to pay for a cool idea. But how can it have any real staying power if fails to deliver anything different than what commercial architecture has already achieved? In other words, the day that I see yuppies walking to take care of their business in their neighborhood will be the day that I acknowledge that New Urbanism has staying power.
I wish this were not so. Commercial architecture ranks just above Modernism in my book. I would love it if people stopped building sub-divisions and strip malls. I would love it if America would go back to an architecture that was more community based. But I don't see any sign that most Americans want to live in real communities. What good is a theory that makes possible a lifestyle that nobody wants?
I would like to add to this discussion by introducing a continuing essay of my observations about Disney's Celebration (over a 10 year period) here: http://www.eurodesignvip.com/Cel...%
20Critique.htm
I am for Old Urbanism, or the older commercialism -- at least the kind found in city centers that have the proper scale, textural interest and economic viability -- as found in the few U.S. cities that have these admirable qualities...which happen to be so similar to their European inspirations brought to this country by the English, French and Spanish.
You guys go on and on over your ugly Modernist boxes. When will you stop victimizing the rest of us? We do not want Modernist boxes! Get over it. This is still a democracy, and you do not have the right to dictate taste. It makes me laugh to see how even you architects often live in traditional architecture. You don't even want to eat yoru own slop, just force feed it on other people.
Mr. Ruffo,
Although your mind seems made up, I'll say this on behalf of my fellow architects: there is nothing contradictory about Modernist architects living in traditional homes. We don't see it as betraying our principles but rather an affirmation of them. Our love of good architecture is based not on style or period but rather on timeless qualities of craft, detailing, space, light, mass and overall proportions. Although I'd prefer architects to be better versed in architectural history, we are trained to appreciate at a deep level all the architecture of the past, and to determine what made it good. Le Corbusier did this early in his career, as his gorgeous and insightful travel sketches attest.
Most modern architects have a deep reverence for the past, especially if it was well executed and a truthful expression of its times. And that also relates to why we practice in the current modern idiom- it as a more honest expression of the times we live in. There seems to be a moral problem of trying to faithfully restore a past style that has little to any real connection with contemporary reality. Designing for nostalgia is in my opinion a superficial exercise.
But don't worry Mr. Ruffo. The market dictates what we do, and if most people want the traditional stuff, that's what architects will churn out. We have to make a living. By don't call us hippocrites for our love of all building of all periods and our desire truthfully express the creative energies of our times.
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