2 comments about The Landscape Urbanism Reader.

1. this book is really good to students who study Landscape Architecture.



2. This was a gift for my architect brother. He was thrilled with it. It was received as promised, with quick shipping and arrived in pristine shape. It was indeed a merry Christmas.

5 comments about The High Cost of Free Parking.

1. You have to be willing to wade through a few equations to enjoy this book but if you care about cities, economics, or the environment, this impassioned (in its academic way) plea for rational parking management at the neighborhood level can open your eyes to the potential for a win-win solution to the world's infrastructure and quality of life problems. I came out of it saying, "wow, the world would be a better place if I had the option of driving to San Francisco to pay $12 to park on the street at my destination instead of wasting time trying to find free but nonexistent parking." If only.



2. Most urban planners don't understand their own parking requirements. Sure, they can repeat whatever the municipal code says, but they probably don't know how that requirement came to be or whether it's the most appropriate for a particular development. For over 50 years, urban planners have been planning the demise of cities by restricting the number of housing units and other development that can be developed on a lot and requiring a corresponding number of parking spaces per housing unit or building size. The result is the surburban wastelands most planners today abhor, yet continue to perpetuate. It's time to stop advocating a perpetual asphalt wasteland and learn how, in collaboration with market forces, to solve the problem of automobile dependence. For once, sit back and open your mind to the idea that less regulation of parking will actually improve the quality of the urban environment, environmentally, ethically, socially, and aesthetically. It's a fascinating concept that Shoup has adequately researched and put forth for the rest of us to learn from!



3. Donald Shoup systematically dissects the enormous hidden subsidy provided primarily by local government to automobile transportation and convincingly upends the notion that there just isn't enough parking. The problem, he argues, isn't that there aren't enough spaces, but that so much space is covered in parking, and so much of that parking is free. Shoup's treatment of unprincipled local off-street parking requirements is particularly convincing and ought to be required reading for any urban or suburban zoning board. The reader will be surprised to learn the true cost of parking, both monetary and cultural.



4. Shoup makes a subject that at first glance would sound boring, quite interesting. The only downside is that he gets a bit repetetive; the book probabaly could have been cut about 150 pages. Still, it's a very valuable resource for any planner or elected official who cares about the health of our cities. The only thing missing is some discussion on how parking immensely increases impervious surface in an area, impacting water quality and supply.



5. In 100 years, people will look back on this book and realize its value. For now, though, it's far too rational to be of much practical use to planners, engineers or politicians. For anyone who ever imagined that parking requirements were established in accordance with scientific criteria, The High Cost of Free Parking should disabuse them of that notion permanently. Shoup recognizes all too well that parking requirements are imposed merely as a knee-jerk reaction to public fears rather than as a practicable solution to an actual problem. His solutions, though well intended, will undoubtedly fall on deaf ears in most instances--until the price of gas is at $30 per gallon and suddenly there are no cars to fill those free parking lots anymore.

5 comments about The New Urbanism: Toward an Architecture of Community.

1. I grew up in what new urbanists would probably call a paradise. It was a real community in which neighbours were really neighbours. People did sit on their verandahs and converse with their neighbours on the street. There was an understanding that one could borrow things if the owner wasn't using them. It was considered polite to tell the owner if he was there but if he was away one could just borrow the thing and tell him when he came home if one was still using it. In short it was everything new urbanism wants. This was in a moderately large city in Canada.

   There were two things wrong with this paradise:

   a) it was not about verandahs, facing the street etc. It was about control and conformity. The neighbourhood protected itself by frowning on unexpected behavior. There was an expected range of interests and an expected range of activity. If someone went out of this range, one could expect social sanctions unfailingly. The dark side of Jacobs 'eyes-on-the-street' is Foucault's 'gaze.' The neighbourhood worked as an exercise in power. The verandahs and street life were instruments of that power. Heaven help anyone who had non-standard interests.

   b) the neighbourhood was unsustaining. With the growth of the personal rights ethos, the ability of the neighbourhood to control its inhabitants fell away. No longer could the neighbourhood fathers take action to control petty teenage misbehaviour. Instead personal rights and social policy took these controls away from the neighbourhood and gave them to government agencies. As a result the neighbourhood is now perhaps not unsafe but definitely uncomfortable. No one leaves tools or equipment out now in case a neighbour needs to borrow it. Everything is locked up. The doors are firmly closed and neighbours now complain to the police instead of discussing thier joint problems.

   New urbanism seems to miss this point. Neighbourhoods are about local power. For some people this produces a comfortable paradise. For those slightly different it creates a jail of conformity. Some people thrive in it. Some peole will be stifled. Neighboourhoods are an exercise in hopefully beneficent control. Architecture does not create this control. It can destroy it certainly and make it impossible but it cannot create it.




2. I have only had the book a day and already it has given me great pleasure and joy. I love the fantastic pictures and diagrams. The computer digitalizations on a few existing towns today and what they could be like were truely fasinating. I couldn't help not liking the indepth descriptions of numourous cities, towns, and villages from around the country and canada as well. This book had colorful photos and diagrams, this book to me is pure genus!



3. A very good appraisal of design examples of new communities with also a consistent theoretical approach to New Urbanism concepts. This is a necessary reading to those that want to be updated with the best design practices of integrated urban spaces.



4. The basic principles presented in this book are the stuff that dreams are made of. I have shared the ideas presented in this book with many of my friends and they all want to live in communities such as this. We've been strip-malled, mega-malled and automobilized to near-death. New Urbanism as presented here is like a million breaths of fresh air.

   It is best to read the basic principles presented in the front of the book first. It may look like dry reading at first but as you get into it, your interest will be piqued at first, then grabbed, and you won't want to put it down till you've read it all. Having read this part you will be armed with the knowledge that, to date, no development or developer has had the guts to follow the principles completely. All of the projects presented include some elements of New Urbanism but none of them have it right. One of the other customer reviewers of this book, Ken Wing, missed this entirely. Hey Ken, there is no people in the Seaside pictures because they want the reader to see the architecture! Those who don't get it, or are afraid of change, tend to trivialze New Urbanism and mis-represent it.

   Once you have read this book, you, like myself will want to immediately pack up and move to a New Urbanist community. Better ones are coming out of the ground each year and I hope to see one near me real soon.




5. This is a good book about bad ideas which-because of their influence-simply must be read. The problems with New Urbanism stem from five implicit premises it shares with other approaches to city planning. Consider them in turn.

   1. The same design approach is appropriate for both cities and suburbs.

   Peter Calethorpe claims the application of urban design principles "regardless of location: in suburbs and new growth areas as well as within the city" is a "simple but unique contribution of this movement." City planning, however, has often applied suburban principles-such as buildings as islands in a sea of grass-in both cities and suburbs. New and old share the underlying belief that the design problem of cities and suburbs is similar. Yet 40 years ago, Jane Jacobs showed us that cities were places where people had to feel safe amidst strangers, which fundamentally distinguished them from suburbs and small towns. The result when premise meets reality is laughable.

   For example, the chapter on the upscale, private golf community of Windsor, FL devotes four full pages to the castle-like entrance building where visitors must pass a security checkpoint. Perimeter walls form an important design element of South Brentwood Village, CA. The text and captions don't mention them, but they show clearly in the illustrations. Unless New Urbanism's model is the medieval walled city, it is hard to see these as urban.

   2. Community is primarily a matter of buildings and their arrangement.

   Those who have not received years of professional training easily fall into the trap that community has to do with people. Planners know better. Community is about buildings and the spaces they enclose. The planners' view is most apparent in the illustrations they choose. Seaside, FL's chapter is typical. Seaside requires front porches, because they supposedly encourage sociability. Seaside's front porches appear in 17 photos. Exactly one porch is in use. Of the six photos showing Seaside's public pavilions and gazebos, but one is in use. The photo of the pedestrian-friendly sand walkway is empty. The planners are proud of their porches, pavilions, paths and gazebos. They constitute "community." Who needs people?

   3. Appearance is more important than functionality.

   Planners design and evaluate with primary reference to aesthetic standards. The design must work at some level, but that limits rather than drives what the planner does.

   For example, the proposed conference center entrance in Montreal is a grand staircase, but it is hard to imagine anyone using it except joggers seeking a challenging exercise regimen. A large stair is also proposed for a park in Communications Hill, CA, not to get up and down, but to "terminate the view from a nearby street."

   The plan for part of Brooklyn, NY, shows a seven block length of Atlantic Avenue taken up by five buildings with nearly identical facades, three one-block long, and two two-blocks long, blocking two cross streets. The centerpiece of this stretch? A two-block-long parking garage. Does anyone really believe vibrant street life could exist here?

   4. Inside the boundary, plan. Outside, ignore or conquer.

   A convention of the planning field concerns how the area surrounding that planned for is portrayed in plans and renderings. Of course, the planner's work is always shown in living color and full detail. Two basic approaches are followed in showing surroundings. In one, surroundings are simply left out, as if the planned area were a space station, or the sole settlement on a virgin continent. In the second, surroundings appear in monochromatic outline, making the viewer aware there is a context, but giving little information about it. Whether this convention is cause, effect, or coincidence, what is clear is that it strongly parallels planners' values and thought process.

   This premise can be seen in action in what is perhaps the worst single design feature in the book. A "major goal" for the Clinton area of New York City was preservation of the few remaining low-rise buildings, including a corner gas station. To the planner, this meant the gas station was "outside" the planning area. Not content with surrounding it with an eight-story building taking the rest of the block along both street frontages, the planner proposed building a canopy on air rights over the gas station, thus engulfing it, amoeba style. Such bizarre design makes sense only when one starts from the planner's premise that what is outside the plan is at best something to be ignored, and at worst an obstacle to be overcome.

   5. Give planners complete control. They know best.

   The desire of planners for complete control is evident from the opening essays, where the wants and ideas of "businesses and public officials" are referred to as "hurdles," and the changes a planner makes to incorporate others' ideas are called "accommodations" and "compromises." Examples of building codes to limit architects and builders to the planners' vision grace several chapters. The pinnacle of control is achieved in Mashpee Commons, MA, where the developer retained ownership of streets to avoid zoning setback requirements.

   The premise that we would all be better off if we would just do what the planners want stems from their deep seated belief that they know best. I hope it is apparent by now that this hubris has no basis in ability or performance.

   As horrifying as these five premises are, it hasn't stopped New Urbanist planners from getting plenty of work, and in many cases getting their plans built. For suburban developers trying to create a simulacrum of pre-WWII, small-town America ala Disneyland's Main Street, the New Urbanism is probably harmless. For cities, the stakes are considerably higher. Cities have already suffered immensely at the hands of planners, and in their current state can hardly afford another round of arrogant ignorance. New Urbanist planners have already been to work on New York, Los Angeles, and Montreal. Read this book before they come to a city near you.

3 comments about Stone House: A Guide to Self-Building With Slipforms.

1. The illustrations inside the book leaves much to be desired. The book is a "Self Guide" to construction; this makes it mandatory to have exceptional pictures, illustrations, and drawings! Sadly, to say notwithstanding, the book-cover the interior is disappointing.



2. Tomm Stanley has written an excellent book that is both instructional and entertaining. He has the experience and forethought to prove that he isn't some hippie with unproven thoughts/ideas, but he also writes in a very warm and personable way that keeps his book from being a dry, tasteless "how to" construction book. He is frank with his mistakes, offers proven and tested solutions openly, and explains things scientifically enough to satisfy this reviewer (I'm an engineer).
   
   My only slight complaint is that many of the photos are terrible quality and you must go to the book's website to view the higher quality versions. This isn't too bad, but I worry that someday the website will move/discontinue and I'll be left with a book poorly illustrated.



3. It's easy to build it yourself with slipforms - especially if you also have in hand Tomm Stanley's Stone House, covering slipforming methods, sources for materials, stonelaying techniques, and more. Tomm Stanley and his partner know their stuff: he built his own home from slipforms and his construction photos can even be seen on-line in color - most included with this book, in black and white.

5 comments about Design with Nature (Wiley Series in Sustainable Design).

1. My husband is a landscape designer and architect. So, he loves this stuff! I bought it for him as one of his birthday gifts. He has been wanting something of high quality and loves McHarg. I would recommend this book. We keep it on the coffee table because the pictures are wonderful and the design shows through. My husband and I love it!



2. As a former colleague of McHarg's at the University of Pennsylvania during the 1960's, and currently working in a planned community he designed (The Woodlands, TX), I decided to buy this book to try to understand the strange idiosyncracies of The Woodlands, TX.
   
   The book is very wordy, but it is well illustrated. McHarg successfully blended community design with natural boundary conditions (watershed management, geology, forestry, slope properties, etc) with the case histories he presented (some of which I remember when serving on an invited basis on jury's in McHarg's academic program). The book's strength is his advocacy of melding human planning needs with nature's boundary conditions.
   
   BUT, does it really work? Only at the expense of the time of people working and living in such a planned community. The inconvenient practices that go with such a planned community require a lot of adjustment that asks a bit much of people who work in such places but don't live there.
   
   But it works fine for the affluent and the unhurried who can afford it.



3. No has estudiado arquitectura si este libro no ha caido en tus manos. Sin Ian Mcharg la arquitectura sostenible no seria posible. Por lo menos la arquitectura sostenible pensada a escala regional."



4. this highly recommended book started out as a compelling read, but became something i had to force myself to finish. it seems to be a series of lectures strung together, which may have been interesting as lectures, but is not cohesive enough to be a book. the good information is lost amidst the rambling style.



5. Anyone studying environmental planning or LA should read this book.

No comments about Cities as Sustainable Ecosystems: Principles and Practices.

No comments about The New Transit Town: Best Practices In Transit-Oriented Development.

No comments about Form Based Codes: A Guide for Planners, Urban Designers, Municipalities, and Developers.

No comments about Landscape Architecture: Water Features (Landscape Architecture).

No comments about Urban Landscape Architecture.