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Jon Lang - Communities, Neighbourhoods and Streets - 2477 - 8427

This document discusses different definitions and types of communities and neighborhoods. It examines how streets can act as access points or seams that facilitate community formation. Various urban design approaches are analyzed that attempt to design or facilitate communities, including the neighborhood unit concept, new urbanism principles, and vertical neighborhoods. The document emphasizes that while formal organizations can be designed, communal organizations emerge organically, and the role of design is to provide opportunities for communities to develop. Overall streets and central nodes are important for neighborhood quality, but true community depends more on the people and their shared interests.

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113 views45 pages

Jon Lang - Communities, Neighbourhoods and Streets - 2477 - 8427

This document discusses different definitions and types of communities and neighborhoods. It examines how streets can act as access points or seams that facilitate community formation. Various urban design approaches are analyzed that attempt to design or facilitate communities, including the neighborhood unit concept, new urbanism principles, and vertical neighborhoods. The document emphasizes that while formal organizations can be designed, communal organizations emerge organically, and the role of design is to provide opportunities for communities to develop. Overall streets and central nodes are important for neighborhood quality, but true community depends more on the people and their shared interests.

Uploaded by

Anusha Kant
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Neighbourhoods, Streets

and Communities

Jon Lang
MUDD Program, UNSW
3rd July 2008

CRICOS Provider code: 00098GCRICOS PROVIDER CODE 00098G


Community?
There are a number of definitions:
• The people living in an area
• An interacting populations of
individuals in a common location
• A group of people with a common
interest.
Webster’s New Encyclopedic Dictionary (1993): 199
Streets and Communities
The primary role of streets is to give access
streets also act as
• edges or they can act
• as seams for everyday life and community
formation.
The urban design issue:
When do we give primacy to traffic flows and
when to the street as a seam – as a set of
behaviour settings?
Communities?
• Socio-Psychological
- Formal Organization
- Communal Organization
• Physical
- Precincts
- Neighbourhoods
- Face-blocks
- Buildings
Organizational Types:
Formal Organizations
• They are held together by contract
• They can be designed
Communal Organizations
• They are held together by social
norms
• They cannot be designed; they grow
from the grassroots
Types of socio-physical
communities
• The total territorial community
-- the cresive community
• The community of limited-liability
and
• The administered community
• The designed community
A total community?
Collection of the author Photograph by Carolina Calderon

A pol, Ahmedabad
An administered community

GSFC Township Vadodara (Baroda), India


B. V.Doshi and the Vastu Shilpa Foundation, urban designers and architects
Wenxinyuan, Hankou

Design principles:
• walled and gated
• a hierarchy of formal organizations
- block
- street
- building.
Is it a designed community or an Source: Bray (2006)

administered community?
A designed community:
A cohousing example

Trudeslund, Denmark
Vankustein, architects
The search for ‘community’
through urban design
Design Ideas:
• The standard model for decomposing a city
into its parts
• The neighbourhood unit updated
• The vertical neighbourhood
The role of streets in all these examples?
The generic urban decomposition model
Source: Hester (1975)

A specific case: Columbia, Maryland, USA


Rouse Corporation Property Developers.
The neigbourhood unit
Design Principles:
• A well-bounded area (good contour)
• Communal facilities at the core
• ¼ mile (400 metres) walking
distance from the periphery to the
core
• Shopping and apartment buildings at
the intersections with neighbouring
units
Clarence Perry
Source: Regional Plan of New York, 1929
The Radburn (New Jersey, USA) plan
Source: Gallion and Eisner, 1975

The plan as built A cul--de-sac


Clarence Stein and Henry Wright designers (Late 1920s)
Radburn

An underpass A walkway from the back of houses to the central park


The first generation British new towns
Source: Runcorn Development Corporation (1967)

Runcorn, England (1970s)


A pedestrian pocket proposal
Source: Kelbaugh (1989) Collection of the author

The generic idea An example


New Urbanism and neighbourhood design
A neighbourhood should have:
• A discernible centre
• Buildings in the centre built to the property line
• Dwellings within a 5minute walk from the centre
• A variety of dwelling types
• Shops and offices at the periphery
• An elementary school within walking distance of houses
• A playground within 1/8 mile (200metres)
• A connected network of streets
and
• A formal self-governing organization

Source: Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater Zyberk Architects, Inc.


The neighbourhood unit updated, 1994
Design Principles
• ¼ mile walking distance
• 160 acres bounded by boulevards
• shops + bus stop at the centre
• school shared with adjacent areas
• mixed use main street
• offices etc + parking on boulevards

Duany and Platter Zyberk, architects


The image of the main street

Source: Jackson (2006)

Proposal for Fullerton, California 2006


100 homes, 300,000 sq feet (27871sq metres) commercial space
Example: Playa Vista, Los Angeles

Source: Katz (1994): 186


US Patent 6688052- Neighborhood housing arrangement
(2004)

Source http://drflandershometown.com/HT%20PICTURES%20PAGE%2001.htm
The Rationalist Response:
A vertical neighbourhood

Source: Richards (1962)

The Unité d’ habitation, Marseilles, France


Le Corbusier, architect
A district of vertical neighbourhoods

Buildings set in open space


The modern version?
The street as seam
Why bother?
Streets as nested sets of behaviour settings

Remember such observations as these are culture-bound!


A University-Town Community
A Neo-Traditionalist approach

Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
Traffic and face-block neighbourhoods

The higher the traffic volume the less the communication across streets
Stage in life cycle and mobility

Source: Michael Southworth


Children – the true neighbourhood people?

Source: The Smithsons

Question: What do we do with observations


such as this one?
A study of children’s play areas

Source: Randolph Hester, Neighborhood Space


The woonerf
or
‘shared street’

Source: Southworth and Ben Joseph, 1996


The cul-de-sac
No longer a viable option? Too old-fashioned?

It’s a favoured play space for children


Recognizing the limitations of
planning and design
Creating opportunities for the formation
of community
(i.e., communities of limited liability)
What can we do today?
In creating a sense of community in a
neigbourhood or in a building:
• Design a central node
• Create a boundary
• Create an image of similarity of buildings
• Create formal organizations
• Create opportunities/catalysts for social
meeting.
The most one can expect to achieve is a
community of limited liability but also one rich
in informal learning opportunities for children.
A community of ‘limited liability’
Collection of the author

Millennium Village, Greenwich, London, England, UK


Ralph Erskine, Urban Designer and Architect
A college community

Kresge College, University of California at Santa Cruz


Moore and Turnbull, architects
A community of scholars?
A designed community

The National Center for the Humanities, North Carolina, USA


Hartman Cox, Architects
Conclusion
Remember:
• We can design formal organizations
• We cannot design communal ones
• We can create opportunities
(affordances) for the development of
communal organizations
But:
• Most depends on the people involved
and their aspirations
The quality of streets is fundamental in the
quality of communities
• They can be seams for everyday life
• They are multi-purpose spaces
• They establish the character of any
development
Remember:
• streets are three dimensional not just
the roadbed; they are enclosed by
buildings
‘A street wants to be a room’
Louis I Kahn
The character of streets shapes the character of neighbourhoods
Photographs by Jesus Lara Source: Croc (2005)

Main Street, Moapa Valley, Nevada and an alternative


Thank you
Jon Lang

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