Chris Alexandar and Stewart Brand believe in evolution

[lightwalker]

Reading these two books concurrently has me thinking about place making. Specifically, why should it cost a lot to make small commercial/residential streets friendly for pedestrians and bikes? A lot of the planning initiatives I've seen assume that rigid zoning + money = good places. I think that's dead wrong. I think flexible zoning + time = good

Comments

[ribbin]

I think that's wonderfully phrased!

Also, I think pride in ones home is absolutely essential. One of the reason I love Davis so much is that Davisites are fiercely territorial- yeah, this is a weird little cow-cum-college town, but damnit, this is their weird little cow-cum-college town, and don't you forget it! As a result, there are lots of community-oriented things, from farmers markets to a bike-powered carousel in Central Park.

Taking that into account, it would seem to me that it's a matter of flexible zone + time + community investment (both in the sense of the community investing in the town and the town investing in the community) = good places.

[lightwalker]

Davis is a good example of another interesting phenomenon - college towns where highly transitory populations create high quality residential space. When I think of the standard residential response to a university, it's a doughnut shape of crappy apartment buildings around the campus; monotonous blocks of properties with low owner investment, even lower resident investment, and hyper-rigid zoning guidelines because nobody's going to care about the space unless they're forced to. The best way to avoid this is to plant your university in the middle of an existing community, driving up the land value by increasing the demand for rental units. But a few towns like Davis, Eugene OR, and Burlington VT have taken a completely different route and gotten it right. By creating flexible zoning they've taken advantage of the energy of their student residents by letting them actually modify and emotionally invest in the places they live, and in return they've gotten value-added space at very low cost. I don't know if this encourages more students

[ribbin]

I'm not certain if it's flexible zoning or (and?) a certain attitude toward students. I know that some cities, like Isla Vista (the small town tacked onto Santa Barbara where UCSB is) foster a rivalry bordering on hatred between city residents and students. Davis, on the other hand, is a highly integrated city- students regularly run for city council, are encouraged to vote and participate heavily in community organizations and events, and in return many citizens work at the university, employ students or join student-led clubs. It's very symbiotic.

[whetherwoman]

That sounds like a chicken-and-egg question--does space create community or community create space? The more important question for me is which aspect can we most easily influence.