Novo urbanismo está morto. Viva o novo urbanismo. Ele recebeu um aumento de popularidade quando foi a 'cidade perfeita' apresentada no filme Jim Carrey,
Seaside is the little town on the Northwest Florida Gulf Coast, a mile further west along the beach from where I have been fortunate enough to keep a home for the past couple of decades.
Designed and built in the 1980’s by visionary landowners, architects, and town planners it quickly became the poster child for New Urbanism. It got a further popularity boost when it was the ‘perfect town’ featured in the Jim Carrey movie, The Truman Show.
novo urbanismo não é realmente novo. Aquela construção de casas, comodidades e espaços públicos que seus trabalhadores desfrutaram foram bons negócios. Muita inovação, uma boa idéia no Reino Unido se torna uma indústria nos EUA. Esta pequena cidade costeira dos EUA aparece no
For sons and daughters of the Wirral like me, we all learned about the origins of Port Sunlight and the remarkable foresight Lord Leverhulme displayed in understanding that building homes, amenities, and public spaces his workers enjoyed was good business.
If you haven’t been to Port Sunlight and wandered its perfectly manicured lawns, grand approaches to its Soap Factory, the Lady Lever Art Gallery, and the function rooms where The Beatles played their first gig, you really should.
But like so much innovation, a good idea in the UK becomes an industry in the US.
Seaside could probably link its idealistic heritage back to Port Sunlight. This small US coastal town features in the Uma visão da Grã -Bretanha documentário narrado e produzido pelo então príncipe de Gales, agora rei Carlos III. Seus códigos arquitetônicos, ideais da comunidade e centricidade das pessoas, sem dúvida, ajudaram a moldar o pensamento do monarca em construir sua cidade de Poundbury em seu ducado de terra da Cornualha. Apesar dos altos ideais de vizinhança, capacidade de locomoção, design sustentável e estética - um fator interrompeu seu progresso - pessoas. Planejadores, sonhadores e arquitetos esperam. Aqueles ideais originais de novo urbanismo. Esse plano original era construir um novo lugar, enraizado no Smalltown Americana Vernacular, onde as pessoas viveriam uma vida maravilhosa. It.
Seaside’s 40-year existence holds some lessons for others to consider.
Beautiful as it is, kissing the white sand and turquoise waters of this coast, Seaside has its challenges. Despite the high ideals of neighbourliness, walkability, sustainable design and aesthetics – one factor has interrupted its progress – people.
Rather like those artist’s impressions of happy families pushing prams while toddlers run free across the open plaza at the foot of monstrous 1970’s tower blocks in Liverpool, Birmingham and Manchester, the reality is always a little different: people it seems just don’t perform the way planners, dreamers and architects hope for.
In the UK many of those high-rise towers have now been bulldozed less than 50 years after being built, hated by their residents, becoming lawless and hopeless estates.
In Seaside’s case the challenge has been the opposite – too much money.
Seaside marketed itself better than anyone, created the demand and in doing so cemented those original ideals of New Urbanism. That original plan was to build a new place, rooted in the smalltown Americana vernacular, where people would live a wonderful life.
The problem, if it is that, is it was too popular.
Only an hour’s flight or a 6-hour drive from some of America’s most successful cities – Atlanta, Nashville, Birmingham, Dallas and Houston – everyone wanted a piece of it.
With these ‘money rich, time poor’ suburbanites longing for a week at the beach – that is the vacation allocation the US work system affords even the highest paid executives – Seaside became a ‘must do’ destination.
Os preços subiram, a oferta era limitada e apenas os muito ricos podiam pagar. Cornish, os leitores do Norte e Gales e Cumbrianos simpatizarão. Próximos 7 dias. Os guardas de segurança patrulham para aplicar as regras da cidade sobre onde as bicicletas e carrinhos de golfe têm perseguindo gaggles de visitar adolescentes dentro e fora da praia à noite. Temporada de aluguel, a motivação para possuir nas mudanças à beira -mar. Os seres humanos são inconstantes assim, especialmente sobre dinheiro. Era para estar em algum lugar para viver não um resort. Talvez construí -lo em um local tão fascinante na praia tenha sido o erro?
But, most importantly, these new homeowners weren’t actually living there. Cornish, North Welsh and Cumbrian readers will sympathise.
Though the design plan was to build proximity to your neighbours, to share cheery ‘hellos’, cups of coffee and glasses of wine on sunset porches, the reality is many of the properties are holiday homes, sat empty for much of the year, or rented out to families who come for a week, disappear, and are replaced by a facsimile family for the next 7 days.
The handful of year-round-residents huff and grumble about the renters and the homeowners who rent to them. Security guards patrol to enforce town rules about where bikes and golf carts are permitted to go and chase gaggles of visiting teenagers on and off the beach at nighttime.
This wasn’t part of the plan – everybody was supposed to love everyone not loathe them.
But when you can command upwards of $20,000 a week to rent out your Seaside second home, make more than $500,000 for a 36-week rental season, the motivation to own in Seaside changes. Humans are fickle like that, especially about money.
Don’t get me wrong, the town still looks pristine and still offers a fabulous vacation experience, but that wasn’t its purpose at the outset. It was meant to be somewhere to live not a resort. Perhaps building it in such a glamorous beachside spot was the mistake?
de volta ao Leverhulme. Grande parte dessa terra é o cinto verde - campos virgens e verdejantes, apenas manchados por inúmeras vacas - estritamente fora dos limites para os desenvolvedores. As autoridades locais se recusaram a jogar bola, e os planos foram amplamente gelados desde então. E se um novo assentamento fosse construído nos acres de terra disponível a poucos minutos das junções da auto -estrada que o dissecam? As reformas, vitais em muitas casas do século, devem ser feitas de uma certa maneira de preservar toda a integridade do lugar, ainda se parece muito com o que foi construído. As propriedades de um milhão de libras também estão disponíveis. Esses são novos ideais urbanistas. Eu posso ouvi-los chorar que a economia do desenvolvimento não apóie tal
In what seems like a previous life, I recall Leverhulme Estates wanting to build on the land they own in Wirral. Much of this land is green belt – virgin, verdant fields, only sullied by countless cows – strictly out of bounds for developers.
Leverhulme’s development arm submitted plans to build on the little bits of green belt which separate one town from the next, preserving their standalone identities. The local authorities refused to play ball, and the plans have been largely iced since.
But what if new plans took a page from the New Urbanism handbook? What if a new settlement was built on the acres of land available just minutes from the motorway junctions which dissect it?
And what if the founding principles of Leverhulme’s Port Sunlight and King Charles’ Poundbury were adopted with a sprinkle of the marketing glitter of Seaside?
Even today, Port Sunlight manages the homes and communal areas to a set of codes and expectations. Refurbishments, vital in many of the century old homes, must be done a certain way to preserve the whole place integrity, it still looks much like it did when it was built.
And to avoid Seaside’s wealthy enclave factor, Poundbury has a 35% affordable housing quota, not built as an afterthought on some muddy backwater, but folded into the high streets, park-side communities, sharing hallways and driveways with the million-pound properties also available.
Rental units exist in both places, but strict restrictions on short term renting and sub-letting too, helping to create and shape community life. These are new urbanist ideals.
I know many readers of this column are in the property, development, construction sectors, others are in local government. I can hear them cry that the economics of development don’t support such Pie-in-sky Ideias. Necessário. Hoje. Estatutário.
But according to all sources, the UK is deep in a housing crisis.
One which, arguably, was hastened and facilitated by the current model for development and has failed to provide the homes required.
Again, people probably got in the way of such idealistic nonsense as a home for everyone who needs one.
The feeding frenzy to sink your pension into property drove the disastrous buy-to-let boom and crash, and the complicity of some not particularly imaginative or committed planning departments lead to the proliferation of poorly built 2-bedroom boxes which scar many towns and cities today.
In some cases, the desire to make a profit – both private developers seeking cash and local authorities hungry for extra revenue – trumped everything else, inviting the unscrupulous in search of a quick buck.
Unlike any other industry, it appears consumers – residents – were never consulted or considered beyond the statutory.
Imagine se as pessoas fossem perguntadas o que queriam em uma casa?
quase ninguém falaria sobre design experimental, aparência futurista ou materiais contemporâneos. Arquitetos e designers podem ficar decepcionados, mas desenvolvedores e planejadores devem tomar nota. Belgravia, o bairro da Geórgia, subúrbios frondosos, villas vitorianas à beira -mar - casas clássicas construídas em um estilo convencional que elas conseguiram personalizar e transformar em casa. Paredes, portas, telhados. Jardins da frente privados e espaço para as crianças brincarem. Assim como as pessoas exigem há séculos. E as autoridades locais precisam criar as regras e circunstâncias para entregar isso. Outras comunidades ao longo da praia aprenderam e proibiram aluguel de curto prazo, mudando sua dinâmica de comprador/investidor. E os edifícios estão sendo reformados e rejuvenescidos, o que impulsiona a repovoamento tão intrínseca ao sucesso da criação de lugares. A Wirral está marketing agressivamente como o #
People would choose homes with adequate space, security and amenity, pleasing on the eye and engendering a sense of place, here, now.
In fact, superstar developers, millionaire architects and humble town planners already know this – after all where do they live? Belgravia, The Georgian Quarter, leafy suburbs, seaside Victorian villas – classic houses built in a conventional style which they have been able to personalise and turn into a home.
So why not repeat the magic for the rest of us? Walls, doors, roofs. Private front gardens and space for kids to play. Just as people have demanded for centuries.
And sustainability – the buzz word – isn’t just about carbon footprint, it is about building for the long term, nothing is more sustainable than a development which stands for centuries.
As the community in Seaside grapples with its evolution from town to resort, we all need to understand what people want from their community, their homes, their neighbourhoods – now and in the future. And local authorities need to create the rules and circumstances to deliver this.
Clearly, Seasiders today want holiday homes not a full-time residence because that profit motivation is strong – neither they nor the planners are wrong, and while this was perhaps not the wishes of those early adopters back in the 1980’s – things do change. Other communities along the beach have learned and have outlawed short term rentals, changing their buyer/investor dynamic.
And while this is all well and good in a privileged beach town, aren’t the fundamentals true everywhere?
Run down parts of towns do gentrify and become desirable again, economic rejuvenation arrives with high streets and civic areas being refurbished, and nearly always it is because traditional homes and buildings are being refurbished and rejuvenated which drives the repopulation so intrinsic to the success of place making.
Marketing dollars are spent by local authorities, developers and others to promote place. Wirral is aggressively marketing itself as the # LeftBank, posicionando -se como o irmão mais fresco e mais frio da turbulenta e grita de Liverpool - que as pessoas realmente desejam viver em reconfigurar 42424, mas agora que as pessoas que as pessoas desejam viver. “
Perhaps that’s the new urbanism solution: “ Não pense demais, basta criar o que as pessoas querem”. Downtown in Business
