[Steve Mouzon]

Good luck, Nick! I’m extremely high on the SmartCode for many reasons. It really is the biggest revolution in coding since the Euclidean code. FWIW, I developed the Sky Method as a highly incremental development mechanism that bypasses the broken American development financing system by developing in tiny nibbles, not broad strokes. Check it out and let me know what you think: FWIW, the Sky Method’s operating system is the Transect, which also drives the SmartCode. The Sky Method could actually be done as a major Plug-In to the SmartCode.

[Steve Mouzon]

Jason, it’s most predictable at either extreme. At one end is the suburban pad site, not walkably connected to anything. We can accurately predict the maximum number of building occupants and the cars it will take to get them there. At the other end is a highly mixed-use, compact, and walkable neighborhood where there are many things to walk to and delightful walking experiences to get there. The better the urbanism, the fewer people choose to have cars. I live in South Beach, which is predominately 2-3 stories, and it’s so good that 45% of the residents don’t even own a car. I do, but only drive once or twice a week when I have to go off the beach. So the parking needed for individual businesses here is very low, because so many people walk or bike instead.

In between these two extremes, of course, it’s less predictable. As a rule of thumb, if you’re referring to individual developments rather than neighborhoods, then the context in which these developments are located is unlikely to be walkable enough to help substantially.

[Steve Mouzon]

Thanks, Nick! I’d love to hear what you think once you’ve seen it!

[Steve Mouzon]

FWIW, this was Galina Tachieva’s submission to ReBurbia. She’s writing a book, which should be released shortly… it’s the Sprawl Repair Manual. As for the parking, what we’ve seen repeatedly is that the parking requirements go down for places that are mixed-use. A few people (like me) actually walk to work, so I don’t need two parking spaces (one at home and one at work.) For those who drive, they’re generally gone to work while most of the people are working in the shops and offices, so again, you don’t need as many. And in the bottom example, she’s showing parking on the street… you’d be shocked at how many cars you can park on the street. And it not only slows cars because the travel lanes are narrower, making it safer for pedestrians, but it also puts all those parked cars between people on the sidewalk and the traffic, affording even greater protection. One bald-faced plug: My new book, the Original Green, also discusses many of these issues in the context of sustainability.

[Steve Mouzon]

Thanks, Boilerplate! Since you mentioned it, I’m starting to build an online photo database at http://samouzon.zenfolio.com/

Trace One, I’m not disparaging growth limits… what I’m saying is that growth limits alone don’t do the job, because what gets built within the limits is the same old crap (see Portland.) The ideal situation is one where the fabric of the city is great, and at the edge of the city, you can see the surrounding agriculture, like you can do in Pienza, in Bath, or in thousands of other European towns and villages that haven’t been eaten by sprawl. We’re only just now beginning to learn how to do that in our time. Until now, we’ve failed miserably, as sprawl will attest.

As for landscaping the highway, please be careful to have the highway behave properly for its context. One of the biggest mistakes we make is ramming a highway through a city. When it gets to a city, it should change from the geometries and landscape of a highway to the geometries and landscape of a boulevard, an avenue, or a main street. A highway in the city is as ridiculous as an avenue in the country.

As for home, I’ve moved from a 3,000 square foot house to a 1,500 square foot house to my current 747 square foot condo on South Beach, where I probably crank the car twice a week because I can walk everywhere. There’s a wonderful tropical side garden just outside my living room window; I’m about to convert part of it to an edible garden, but hopefully in beautiful fashion. Matter of fact, as I might have said earlier here (but it bears repeating) one of the most important things that the discipline of landscape architecture can do now is to reinvent the edible garden as being every bit as beautiful as an ornamental garden. The previous green revolution in the 1960s and 1970s failed because its artifacts (like rooftop solar collectors) were conceived only as engineering, with not a shred of beauty. Agriculture is quickly becoming the cool new thing, which is gratifying to me because I’ve been saying for years that sustainable places must first of all be nourishable places. But this, too, could fail if a vegetable garden continues to be conceived as something on par with a laundry room in terms of beauty. Architects and planners could possibly solve this problem, but landscape architects are a natural!

[Steve Mouzon]

I completely agree with this, Nick. Many solutions for many places. It’s just that if we can develop a framework upon which to hang most or all of the ideas, it’s more efficient for sustainability and urbanism newcomers if they don’t have to look all over the place for useful ideas.

With that having been said, those of us in the first generation DID have to look all over for a useful set of ideas. I was on a charrette at Mashpee Commons on Cape Cod nearly a decade ago with Duany, and it was amusing to watch videos from the early 1990’s where Duany and other NU pioneers were pacing off the widths of streets because nobody knew at the time the street widths that were conducive to walkability. So will the assembly of principles within a single set of ideas (the NU) eventually cause intellectual laziness because newcomers don’t have to discover these things for themselves? That’s possible. But it’s a risk we need to take, IMO, because so few capable people emerge when a discipline requires everyone to learn everything on their own.

[Steve Mouzon]

Nick,

I’m a huge fan of ruffling feathers, as you might have noticed. Without that, the default setting is complacency. But trust me… Duany’s complaint isn’t the LA discipline, but rather the confusion of the urban and the rural. As for the “too much of one thing is not good” idea, I completely agree. NU circa 1995 was all about one setting: T4, in Transect lingo. But we’ve moved far beyond that. The Transect has been a great vehicle, because it requires a full range of urbanity, not just one setting. NU learns as it moves forward.

[Steve Mouzon]

Trace One, you’ve GOTTA be kidding!!! Go to Portland, which has the most famous urban growth boundaries, and look at the new development within those boundaries. I’ve driven there for many miles, and never found a single place amongst the new (post-UGB) developments that wasn’t built according to the same crappy standards as sprawl. NU, OTOH, completely changes the pattern of sprawl to something that can be sustainable, so that you can have your choice of ways of getting around, especially including walking and biking, and so that you can make a living where you’re living. You can’t do either of these in sprawl.

As for your concern with a zero-growth economy, I believe you’re really onto something there… here’s my take on the issue: http://bit.ly/4AR2S

[Steve Mouzon]

Nick, there are many NU infill projects… they just don’t get the press the greenfields do because infill projects have to address so many existing conditions that they’re necessarily less iconic in almost all cases. But if you count the total number of NU projects, a shockingly high number are infill.

[Steve Mouzon]

Today is a makeshift solution. Tomorrow is better. Here’s what I mean by that: today (or at least until the meltdown) there was gonna be development on the perimeter no matter what. It’s far better, IMO, to do it in a way that sets the stage for a lower-energy future where you can’t drive everywhere than to do it in standard sprawl pattern so you have to drive wherever you go. Can people still buy in a greenfield TND today, and drive into the city for work? Yes. And unless you’re in a totalitarian state, there’s not a good way to stop that. But in an energy-starved future, outlying NU lives because you can make a living where you’re living, while outlying suburbia dies because you can’t. It’s the difference between life and death tomorrow, even though it’s only a good aspiration today.

[Steve Mouzon]

Celebration is a mistake NU had to make to realize how bad it was. We try lots of stuff. Things that work, we incorporate. Things that don’t, we discard. But you gotta try it to find out for sure. Celebration got stuff famously wrong in well-executed fashion. Stapleton had good intentions, but bad execution. There’s far better stuff than either of those now. This is an evolving situation… please critique the more recent stuff if you want to help move these ideas forward.

[Steve Mouzon]

See below. Not true. Not only is his own brother a landscape architect, but his Charlotte office is putting out some really cool stuff in their Light Imprint initiative that every LA needs to take a look at, IMO: http://bit.ly/8XFflP

[Steve Mouzon]

Part of the problem of affordability is the lack of real diversity of unit types and sizes. I laid out the principles of Katrina Cottages on the Saturday after the hurricane with Duany, and the biggest impediment we’ve had to date has been based purely on their square footage. I live in a 747 square foot condo on South Beach. A house that size would be illegal in most American cities. If everything has to be big, then it’s much less likely to be affordable. Look at the shocking richness of unit types and sizes in the old cities, then look at the poverty of unit type & size diversity today.

[Steve Mouzon]

Several responses:

“I think the planning priciples of NU are generally good ideas as ONE answer to suburban sprawl”

What other answers are there that have moved beyond theory to having been proven in practice? Not saying there aren’t any; I’m just not aware of them.

“As far as people driving to shop and dine in a nu community- I dont think that was really the designers intention in most cases”

Probably correct. NU mixed use is usually conceived to first serve the neighborhood they’re located in. But because they’re categorically cooler than the surrounding sprawl commercial by several levels of magnitude, they typically draw customers from several miles around. But in most cases, these same people were previously driving many miles further to find cool places. So total VMT is dramatically reduced, even though they don’t walk.

“Again, I dont necessarily think NU is THE answer. I dont think I’m that naive.”

One thing to consider: NU has a long history of pragmatism, which means that it engulfs every good idea it runs across. Look at the NU 15 years ago vs. now, and you’ll see what I mean. Celebration, for example, was a mistake we had to make to know how many things we needed to learn. Current NU thought has moved far beyond that.

“Where are the ‘landscape urbanists?'”

One of the most important new initiatives is the creation of nourishable places. Here’s my take on them: http://bit.ly/1Tl6FE ‘Landscape urbanists’ ought to OWN this issue. Agricultural urbanism depends upon romancing the garden. Why should an edible landscape not be every bit as beautiful as an ornamental one? It’s just a different palette of materials. Landscape architects who continue to abdicate the greater responsibilities of their profession by continuing to do “foundation decoration” are as reprehensible as the architects who continue to abdicate the greater responsibilities of their profession by continuing to slather their boxes with “architectural image goo.” http://bit.ly/69h4GF And FWIW, I’m guilty of both offenses in my past… but hopefully not in the future.

[Steve Mouzon]

First, you oughta ask IF we hate New Urbanism, not WHY. And your news on Duany is erroneous. His brother Douglas is a landscape architect, and they get along quite famously. It was Douglas, as a matter of fact, that sparked Andrés’ conception of the Transect. His objection isn’t landscape architecture in general, but rather the attempt to turn everything into a rural scene. Let the city be a city, and let the country be a country. Our urbanity confusion has led us to try to make the city be country (landscaped berms on Main Street) and to make the country be city, which is the spearhead of the impetus for sprawl. The result is a thoroughly unsatisfying result at all settings, because nothing is what it should be, and this condition is unsustainable.

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