Principles of Urban Design

Principles of Urban Desigh
Originally uploaded by rllayman

This image is from the second volume of the Urban Design Compendium, Delivering Quality Places.

One of the biggest problems in community planning is a lack of felt foundational principles. Sure, they are there, written in comprehensive plans and the like, but they aren't lived.

These principles are pretty complete for all planning, even though they focus on urban design. I guess I would add a second principle on "Mobility, Throughput, and reducing automobile use" to make these a set of overarching guiding principles for planning.

It's the basic problem with the current effort to make the Zoning regulations in DC more linked to the Comprehensive Plan.

I just don't think if you read the Comp Plan (I only have a printed copy of the July draft sent to the Council, not the finally produced version) that you would say that the point of planning is to make a great city greater and to make quality, livable places.

Without that as the starting point, people get hung up on maximizing value of individual plots of land. And too often that has nothing to do with building better places.

Elizabeth's comment in an earlier entry about the committee drawn up to reconcile the Zoning regulations with the Comp Plan is all too telling:

"One of my jokes that the previous planning director didn't like is that DC has an Office of Land Use, not an Office of Planning."

And an even bigger joke is the fact that she, the former Chairs of the Zoning Commission and BZA, and a few other rubber stamps for the Growth Machine have been appointed by our politicos to the Zoning Regulations rewrite taskforce. Hold on to your wallets!!

They aren't putting people on the committee with the kind of perspectives expressed by yours truly, even though some advocates are on the panel.

More things to think about:

1. John Silber (yeah, I know) has a new book out on architecture and design and the importance of connectedness, Architecture of the Absurd: How 'Genius' Disfigured a Practical Art, which is discussed in this piece from the Boston Globe, "Silber's architecture shocker."

2. (I keep meaning to write a blog entry about Bilbao, because there was a good set of letters in the Financial Times about how the city's success is about the realization of broad-based planning objectives, not just one signature building.)

3. There is a piece in the arts magazine Believer about how new museums around the world are mostly the same, like chain stores or airports, with little in the way of any local culture or experience. See "NON-PLACES, MEGAMUSEUMS, AND DEMOCRACY." It's an article that we'll have to buy, but it seems definitely worth it.