The Regional City
by: Peter Calthorpe, William Fulton
en | Island Press
1559637838 9781559637831 9781417539642
The Regional City
By Peter Calthorpe, William Fulton
Publisher: Island Press
Number Of Pages: 328
Publication Date: 2001-01
ISBN-10 / ASIN: 1559637838
ISBN-13 / EAN: 9781559637831
Product Description:
Most Americans today do not live in discrete cities and towns, but rather in an aggregation of cities and suburbs that forms one basic economic, multi-cultural, environmental and civic entity. These "regional cities" have the potential to significantly improve the quality of our lives-to provide interconnected and diverse economic centers, transportation choices, and a variety of human-scale communities. In The Regional City, two of the most innovative thinkers in the field of land use planning and design offer a detailed look at this new metropolitan form and explain how regional-scale planning and design can help direct growth wisely and reverse current trends in land use. The authors:
discuss the nature and underpinnings of this new metropolitan form
present their view of the policies and physical design principles required for metropolitan areas to transform themselves into regional cities
document the combination of physical design and social and economic policies that are being used across the country
consider the main factors that are shaping metropolitan regions today,including the maturation of sprawling suburbs and the renewal of urban neighborhoods
.
Featuring full-color graphics and in-depth case studies, The Regional Cityoffers a thorough examination of the concept of regional planning along with examples of successful initiatives from around the country. It will be must reading for planners, architects, landscape architects, local officials, real estate developers, community development professionals, and for students in architecture, urban planning, and policy.
Summary: Community is not everything
Rating: 4
This is yet another book on a New Urbanist idea.
This one describes the idea of transit oriented communties. These are relatively dense planned communities that try to maintain what is seen as the essentials of small community life.
The density and distribution of these communities make them amenable to public transport. However more emphasis is placed on the development of community. Shopping facilities are centralized and made accessible to pedestrians. Public buildings and public space like squares are made central to the life of the community. The public buildings are given distinguished architecture to show their importance to the community. The public park or square is placed at the hub of planned pedestrian traffic to provide a place for unplanned meetings and interactions.
As it is this soert of community will probably work. The idea of the public square at a transportation crossroads as a means to creatre interaction is straight out of Bill Hillier's seminal work 'Space is the machine.' With proper attention to the principles presented by Hillier, there is no reason why a community designed in the way advocated here cannot produce the types of interactions advocated within this book.
However the book does not go far enough to truly identify what these principles are or even to state clearly and directly what basic principles are guiding the plans that it advocates. It would be possible to create developments that follow the plans described here that would work against the outcomes that it is advocating. Hillier's book, in its analysis of some modern housing estates based on similar goals, demosntrates this.
Yet there is something fundamentally wrong with this book. It is a basic statement of architectural determinism. Traditional suburbs are blamed for all problems in society from environmental pollution to school shootings and possibly even to asteroid impacts causing mass extinctions. There seems to be nothing wrong in society that is not the fault of suburbs and that cannot be fixed by these pedestrian-based communities.
The author acknowleges that the autonomy and privacy provided by the suburban form is attractive to many. He even states that his suggested community form is not antithetical to it. However following that one statement the remainder of the book is a jerimiad against suburban life. Privacy and autonomy references are replaced with descriptions of isolation and alienation.
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