New Urbanist Big Boxes

An issue came up at a public meeting yesterday, whether or not big boxes can be incorporated into a 'traditional' town center or neighborhood center.

In some sense I think the answer is no. The very nature of big box retailers - their national (as opposed to local) orientation and their broad spectrum dominance of the retail market, almost by itself robs a town of retail diversity and vitality. If new urbanism is about more than form, it is also about community. A new urbanist neighborhood should have room for different types of housing, a new urbanist shopping district should have room for a variety of types and sizes of retailers.

On the other hand, in an urban design sense, there are probably ways of incorporating a big box into a new urbanist-type fabric. I would be interested in hearing about or seeing examples of this. Seems to me the biggest obstacles are - 1) what do you do with the massive parking areas? 2) How do you deal with the tendency of big boxes to have massive, blank walls?

Pictures of Lost New York

Every once in awhile, the New York Times will run pictures of buildings gone, lost, and destroyed. Click on the title above to go to it.

Why do Americans hate cities?

I've been working on a project for a wealthy, moderately educated suburban county in Georgia, and one message comes through again and again: We do not want to become a city. We do not want density. We want to remain suburban.

Going beyond the contradictions inherent in endless suburban growth, what are the cultural bases for this fear of things urban and love of things suburban? As the suburbs have become ugly, congested places to live lacking in public space, how do they maintain their appeal? What exactly is it about these people's image of 'the city' that is so repulsive?

Is this just a lack of understanding that high density somewhere is exactly what permits low density somewhere else? Are there deep cultural images that are behind this fear of the city? Or is this fear of the city based on suburbanites unpleasant, first hand experience of cities?

Blogging Tips For Us All

I've been reading a lot of articles on blogging, which I thought I would share with you guys to help make sense of the various things you can do with a blog. One place to start is this article written in a very clear tone, with references to more articles such as Blogging 101. Another good introduction was here.

The web photograph tools at Flickr are also interesting for you photographers (Lawrence, Daniel and you, with the tiny camera, Elena!).

I've been getting bogged down in the technical details, because I want to get all of the infrastructure properly set up first, and it will make a big difference if we want to go live someday. This web site, 2blowhards.com, struck me as a good example of a bunch of friends kicking their more articulate thoughts around. But you guys should feel free to write or post or experiment as much as you want with the style, editing, tone, or graphics, whatever you prefer.

David

Daniel, Hyun and Lawrence

I thought that this might be a good way to pool our resources in our various scholarly pursuits, if only because I like e-mailing you all about what various issues I'm researching, what articles I'm reading, and I thought that it might be nice to have a central place for all of us to check in with each other occasionally.

For example, it is very easy for me to add an article that I read today in the New York Times.

And of course. one can be as bold as one likes -- I am sure you guys can get fancier than I can with the web-page design -- but it is generally nice to be able to make my thoughts more visible.

Of course, there is a privacy issue in not blabbing about work too much. However, you shouldn't worry about experimenting with it now -- all of the posts can be edited and changed in the future, if we decide we like doing this.

Do you guys want to try it for awhile? If it goes well, we could consider going live and trying to make it a more visible site, or else just use it to argue.

Dave