I found a great video of Andres Duany talking about “new urbanism” on YouTube. Duany was the consultant that came to Peoria in 2002 and wrote the Heart of Peoria Plan. This video is a lecture he gave in San Antonio, but the principles are the same. It’s about 90 minutes long total, but it’s broken up into nine 10-minute segments for easy viewing.
I’ll featuring one segment a day for the next nine days. (Of course, if you just get caught up in it and can’t wait to see the next part, just go to YouTube and search for “Andres Duany.”) Part 1 covers: “Introduction; Background; Suburban sprawl patterns; the four major components; public realm/private realm.”
Feel free to discuss each of these in the comments section.
Man, can’t you just give us a ten or so line summary? To me, the so-called “new urbanists” are nothing more than urban pioneer yuppies.
Sctobrien– Sure I could, but I thought this would be more engaging. There are a lot of concepts involved, and Duany’s presentation is interesting and entertaining, and he uses a lot of pictures. I figured this would make it easier to understand and discuss.
And I have no idea what you mean by “urban pioneer yuppies.”
“New urbanism” is just a facade being used by developers to pack as many people into the smallest footprint as possible, to increase their profits.
In San Diego, older neighborhoods are being transformed into jam packed, noisy, traffic infested cesspools, by billionaires who live on 10 acre estates in Rancho Santa Fe (SD’s Bel Aire).
The 40 year old, 10 unit, low income apt building next to me was converted to $400k “condos” last year. It’s been pure hell, with 15 rude, loudmouthed, morons moving in, several of whom are already about to default on their loans. Several units are now being rented, at 3 times the monthly rent as before. Who wins? A handful of guys sitting around dreaming up their next scheme.
Thanks for posting CJ and I look forward to the additional videos. The presenter is interesting.
When he discussed the ‘choke’ of the city, I think about all of the commercial development on the north sides of town, while there are a number of empty stores in other areas of town. For Example, Sheridan Village has numerous store opportunities. Actually, there are numerous retail vacancies along the Sheridan corridor between War Drive and Glen to the North.
The best example I’ve seen is the new shopping center they are building out by Northpoint on Knoxville. Not sure of the name. What’s interesting is that Northpoint has multiple empty store fronts, yet they are building a new shopping center just north of there. Or how about the mess over at Glen Hollow. Talk about as boring as you can be. Bad traffic flow, no walking opportunities between stores, and bad aesthetics. I know that if I go to Target, and have to also go to another store, most times I will move my car, just because It’s so far.
Just doesn’t make sense that we abandon older parts of town just to move a ‘stagnant’ population to the north. I guess it would be ‘disposable’ neighborhoods? The whole town is simply sliding north and developers are the only benefactors.