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Title: The New Urbanism: Toward an Architecture of Community by Peter Katz, Vincent, Jr. Scully ISBN: 0-07-033889-2 Publisher: McGraw-Hill Professional Pub. Date: 01 October, 1993 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $49.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.33 (6 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Community is not Architecture
Comment: I grew up in what new urbanists would probably call a paradise. It was a real community in which neighbours were really neighbours. People did sit on their verandahs and converse with their neighbours on the street. There was an understanding that one could borrow things if the owner wasn't using them. It was considered polite to tell the owner if he was there but if he was away one could just borrow the thing and tell him when he came home if one was still using it. In short it was everything new urbanism wants. This was in a moderately large city in Canada.
There were two things wrong with this paradise:
a) it was not about verandahs, facing the street etc. It was about control and conformity. The neighbourhood protected itself by frowning on unexpected behavior. There was an expected range of interests and an expected range of activity. If someone went out of this range, one could expect social sanctions unfailingly. The dark side of Jacobs 'eyes-on-the-street' is Foucault's 'gaze.' The neighbourhood worked as an exercise in power. The verandahs and street life were instruments of that power. Heaven help anyone who had non-standard interests.
b) the neighbourhood was unsustaining. With the growth of the personal rights ethos, the ability of the neighbourhood to control its inhabitants fell away. No longer could the neighbourhood fathers take action to control petty teenage misbehaviour. Instead personal rights and social policy took these controls away from the neighbourhood and gave them to government agencies. As a result the neighbourhood is now perhaps not unsafe but definitely uncomfortable. No one leaves tools or equipment out now in case a neighbour needs to borrow it. Everything is locked up. The doors are firmly closed and neighbours now complain to the police instead of discussing thier joint problems.
New urbanism seems to miss this point. Neighbourhoods are about local power. For some people this produces a comfortable paradise. For those slightly different it creates a jail of conformity. Some people thrive in it. Some peole will be stifled. Neighboourhoods are an exercise in hopefully beneficent control. Architecture does not create this control. It can destroy it certainly and make it impossible but it cannot create it.
Rating: 5
Summary: Every library in the country should have this book!
Comment: I have only had the book a day and already it has given me great pleasure and joy. I love the fantastic pictures and diagrams. The computer digitalizations on a few existing towns today and what they could be like were truely fasinating. I couldn't help not liking the indepth descriptions of numourous cities, towns, and villages from around the country and canada as well. This book had colorful photos and diagrams, this book to me is pure genus!
Rating: 5
Summary: how to design urban spaces in small communities
Comment: A very good appraisal of design examples of new communities with also a consistent theoretical approach to New Urbanism concepts. This is a necessary reading to those that want to be updated with the best design practices of integrated urban spaces.
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Title: Suburban Nation : The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream by Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, Jeff Speck ISBN: 0865476063 Publisher: North Point Press Pub. Date: 16 April, 2001 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
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Title: Charter of The New Urbanism by Michael Leccese, Kathleen McCormick, Congress for the New Urban ISBN: 0071355537 Publisher: McGraw-Hill Professional Pub. Date: 22 November, 1999 List Price(USD): $49.95 |
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Title: Community By Design: New Urbanism for Suburbs and Small Communities by Kenneth B. Hall, Gerald A. Porterfield ISBN: 007134523X Publisher: McGraw-Hill Professional Pub. Date: 12 March, 2001 List Price(USD): $49.95 |
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Title: The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs ISBN: 067974195X Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 01 December, 1992 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: The Next American Metropolis: Ecology, Community, and the American Dream by Peter Calthorpe ISBN: 1878271687 Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press Pub. Date: December, 1995 List Price(USD): $27.50 |
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