I’m just back from four nights in Naples, Maine. This town is in the Sebago Lakes region northwest of Portland and it provides a vivid demonstration of the power of urban planning. Nearly every small town in Latin America is built around a central plaza where the citizens gather at various hours to meet friends, play chess, etc. Small streets radiate from the plaza and hold additional shops and restaurants. Any highway with heavy traffic is typically at least 5 or 10 blocks from the plaza. In Naples and all of the surrounding towns, by contrast, there really aren’t any streets except to provide access to private houses. A “town” is defined by the intersection of two busy state highways. All of the public facilities of the town such as shops, schools, hotels, and restaurants are built along the highways near the intersection. Thus if you’re not in a private home you’re within 25 feet of a 18-wheeler truck going 50 mph.
The handful of locals whom I met reported that despite living in the area for 20 years or more they’d not made too many friends and had a hard time meeting people. You very seldom ran into a friend serendipitously. If you belonged to the Lions Club or had a kid in the school you might meet at a planned activity but that was about it for social life.
(In case you’re curious as to why I wanted to spend four nights at the intersection of two busy state highways it was to add a Single-Engine Seaplane rating to my Commercial pilot’s certificate. The process consisted of about 100 practice takeoffs and landings on various lakes in a 1946 Piper Cub on floats, followed by a checkride with an FAA examiner. Sadly I won’t be able to do much with this rating. Due to the fact that seaplanes combine all of the hazards of boats and airplanes in one machine the insurance is almost 10X the cost of what you pay for the same plane on wheels. A rental seaplane is an uninsurable risk and therefore there are almost no places in the U.S. where you can rent a seaplane and head off without an instructor.)
On my first trip to Maine, I remember entering the state — there was the standard welcome sign, with the slogan “the way life should be.” On one side of the road were some new suburban-style developments, and on the other side of the road was a farm that had been converted into a golf club.
Ah, the way life should be…
Interesting contrast, Phil. Any examples from Latin America? I think it would be some interesting research because I’m a transit planning wannabe 🙂 We do have a nice transportation library in Berkeley, too.
Please see “The City in History” by Lewis Mumford. He talks about the plaza systems contribution to human scale in planning. Other than New England townships and the utopian and religious communities like New Harmony, etc., Mumford had little good to say about American development. He saw the interaction of people in the community as the reason democracy could flourish. Phil T.
Check out the book Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America’s Man-Made Landscape by James Howard Kunstler. He examines the forces that led to the lack of human-sized infrastructrue in America.
I live in a suburb of Montreal, Qu
Ralph: Examples from Latin America? Almost any town will do. Aguas Calientes in Peru is a good car-free example. It is an otherwise insignificant town off the road network and connected only by train to the rest of Peru. It is just below the ruin of Macchu Pichu. For an example with cars… the Colonial Mexico region would probably be an easy place to start, e.g., San Miguel de Allende (near Leon/Guanajuato).
If you want to lay the blame at any one persons feet (for the loss of town centers in america, that is) then look no further that frank llyod wright. He was an adamant proposer of the suburban ideal, with each person owning their own little slice of paradise on the outlying edges of the city. The resulting cancer-like growth of single layer suburban developments has had more to do with the loss of town centers than anything else. The spread out silicon desert that I live in (and that wright wintered in) is a fine example of an expansive nowhere town where people are destined to hour long commutes and the aging town centers resemble lifeless morgues after rush hour.
Just ny two bits…
Here are some decent links on the death of civic life in america:
http://architecture.about.com/library/weekly/aa042699.htm
http://architecture.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://user.gru.net/domz/duany.htm
http://architecture.about.com/library/bl-urbanism-sn.htm
So, what does technology offer us? Has the virtual town center ever come to pass or are we doomed to isolation when I can work from home, shop from home and even attend class… um, from home?
Last night, I was walking around New York. In the course of two hours, I ran into four friends — one was walking home from the grocery store, one was waiting outside a bar for a friend to arrive, one was on a date at an outdoor cafe, and one was on her way to get a haircut.
That sort of thing can only happen in a city that’s designed for pedestrians. It’s pretty hard to meet people and establish a community at 50 mph.
A great — if depressing — read: “Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream”
by Andres Duany.
Another good book on the subject: Jane Jacobs, “The Death and Life of Great American Cities.”
Yet another good book: “The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces” by William Hollingsworth Whyte. While its main focus is on plazas, parks and other kinds of public spaces, the ruminations on urban design in general and how it contributes to a sense of community are excellent and worthy of serious consideration.
You have to also consider how much free time people have. Are those out on the plaza playing chess the retirees or the wage earner? Time is such a precious commodity that cocooning – where people spend more of their time indoors – contributes to in-home theatres and fancy furniture in preference to outdoor activities.