CNU 17: Talk about change

Is sprawl over?

David Crossley, Jun 15, 09.

The Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) wrapped up its 17th Congress on Saturday, June 13, in Denver. While there was a certain amount of lament that many architects and planners were struggling to keep their companies busy with work, there was also a general theme throughout that something momentous was happening: sprawl, speaker after speaker said, is over.

The following is a collection of quotes from some of those speakers.

Ray Gindroz, CNU Chairman
“During these dark days, those schemes that were based on auto-dependency have collapsed, and those places based on real urbanism retained their value.”

[Gindroz also introduced the winner of a CNU 17 video contest.]

John Hickenlooper, Mayor of Denver
CNU had met in Denver 10 years ago - at the most recent CNU, Hickenlooper said, “We wanted you to come back to see how fast these urban projects can occur. They are contagious; one leads to another, and another.”

Pat McCrory, Mayor of Charlotte
“I’m convinced that the best mayors are those that have a love and passion for urban planning.”

McCrory’s vision plan uses the tagline “Mayberry & Metropolis,” and he explained that the vision is to offer big-city opportunity in a small city environment. “You’re creating a bunch of small towns in a city.”

“Looking out 10 years is too short; you have to think 50-100 years. You can make money with a longer term, sustainable project.”

Victor Dover, Principal, Dover, Kohl & Partners
“There are at least four emergencies: global climate change; incipient post-peak oil/post-carbon world; deteriorating public health; and the wave of changing demographics.”

“In 2009, the 20th century finally ended.”

“Ideas that were fringe material at CNU 1 are now mainstream. Perhaps we should declare victory.”

“We know how to do this stuff because we studied 3,000 years of human history.”

“We have to have free-range children, not captured ones.”

“The sprawl experiment was just that – an experiment. It took 50 years for it to begin to fade away, but now it’s happening.”

John Massengale, architect
“We’re taking back the streets, to use them not just for driving.”

Christopher Leinberger, Visiting Fellow, Brookings Institution
“High speed rail is the most important investment we will make in America, and if we don’t make it, we are condemning ourselves to be Russia.”

Carol Coletta, president and CEO, CEOs for Cities
“If we can add 1% educated talent to our cities, reduce vehicle miles traveled by 1 mile per day, and reduce poverty by 1% in every city, we could produce a $166 billion annual dividend nationally.”

(Referring to a website called WalkScore): “The higher the walk score, the higher the value of the home.”

Peter Calthorpe, Calthorpe Associates
“When the US sets a goal of reducing vehicle miles traveled, all things will change.”

“It’s all about transportation, and that’s all about urban design.”

“Urban projects push vehicle miles traveled down even without transit.”

“We had a traffic engineer in Toronto say that density rules should be based on transit capacity, not road capacity.”

Laurie Volk, Zimmerman/Volk Associates
“Elected officials who say ‘I’m trying to bring the family back to the city’ are working on a losing proposition because it’s such a small piece of the market.”

“Baby Boomers are the famous pig in the python who will dominate the market for a long time now. They’re into museums, gardening, tennis, golf, and theaters. They’re not so much into teenage boys, smoking, getting older, retirement, or death.”

“The piglet in the python, the second biggest group, are the Millennials, born from 1977-1996. They’re into cities, clubs, museums, yoga, and mountain climbing. They’re not into hunting, fishing, NASCAR, golf, or Baby Boomers.”

“Boomers and Millennials are abandoning the suburbs in every region.”

“There is now an incredible housing imbalance.”

“Two-thirds of the market is for 1 or 2 person households.”

“The majority of the market is now looking for sustainable, urban, walkable neighborhoods with transit.”

James Howard Kunstler, author
“The most striking thing about what’s going on now is the lack of consensus about what is happening to us. If we’re not living in stable economy – and we’re not – then no market assumptions mean anything. The zombie economy can go on maybe 4-5 months. As no one shows up to buy American debt, we will see a falling standard of living with a bottom we can’t imagine.”

“Capital is flying out of the system.”

“The oil equipment is old and decrepit and is no longer worth replacing.”

“We have created an infrastructure for daily life that has no future. That has spawned a huge body of fantasy.”

“We’re going to be disappointed by the ideas about solar and wind and so on if we want to continue to do all the things we’re fantasizing about. That might work on a household or neighborhood basis.”

“We’re not even going to be able to maintain the Interstate system.”

“We need a better conversation, one that’s not based on market fantasies about techno-grandiosity or just organizing our way through the disorder in the system.”

“There are two big issues:
1. The way we produce food is the most important issue, because it’s all based on massive use of energy and petroleum products and long-distance distribution. It will require more human time and energy and less transportation;
2. Say farewell to the reigning paradigm – sub-urban sprawl. It’s over. It’s not coming back. We’re done. It’s over. Your adversary has left the room.”

“The age of the 3,000-mile Caesar salad is coming to an end.”

“Now we need the remaining land for agriculture and to produce more stuff close to home.”

“There is a lot of fantasy going on about cities. But cities will have as many problems as sprawl. Big city metros will contract significantly, there will be lots more ethnic friction and a fight over table scraps.”

“Old cities will contract around their old centers, especially around water, and anything past a quarter-mile from the centers is at question.”

“Skyscrapers are only possible with cheap energy. That infrastructure has no future. Tower buildings have to come off the menu. We’re done with them.”

“Small cities that have been nearly de-activated – that’s where the scale works and that will be the action, places that exist in a meaningful relationship with productive agriculture. We’re not prepared for that at all.”

“Las Vegas? It’s over. Phoenix? Forget about it. Tuscon, finished. “

“We have to rethink what the American agricultural village is. We don’t know how that works anymore.”

“The production homebuilders have died and are not coming back. We need to change the scale of work. The normal scale is the individual lot. Urbanist architects should become owners/developers/builders at that scale.”

“The impulse to ruralize the city is typologically not right. We have to speak very precisely about what activities take place where. Agricultural production is rural. The rural and the city have to be close, but not confused.”

“We don’t have a moment to lose for blame or psychotherapy, blame, and feelings.”

“It’s the unfortunate destiny of the ridiculous to be ridiculed. We’re a nation of clowns. It’s time to man-up and take off the clown costumes. Young men dress like babies, but young women don’t do that. The male spirit in the US is severely impaired right now.”

“Hope is generated internally.”

Doug Farr, principal, Farr Associates
“LEED-certified buildings will have be using zero net energy by 2015. Buildings not at the core urban scale will be able to do that faster.”

“We have to deal with public darkness. There are links between light levels and cancer. The body needs several hours of darkness to make melatonin. We need standards for that.”

Billy Hattaway, P.E., Vanasse Hangen Brustlin
“There is no evidence that wider roads are safer. In fact, existing 9- and 10-foot lanes are working fine with low crash rates.”

William Lieberman, Jacobs Engineering
“The density of intersections and road connectivity are critical to transit success.”

“Cul de sac development makes it almost impossible to deliver pedestrian-oriented transit.”

“On-demand transit indicates failure of the land use/transportation system.”

Andrés Duany, DPZ
“We’re not in the business of transportation, or numbers; we’re in the business of human happiness.”

“If the ideal is wilderness, every human who walks into degrades it.”

“The density of Manhattan, the pavement of Manhattan, the heat island of Manhattan are parts of the solution, not the parts of the problem.”

Andrés Duany on Agricultural Urbanism:
“I believe [agricultural urbanism] is the most important subject for new urbanism.”

“Villages are machines that grow food. Villagers who do this should be exempt from density requirements. But there should be food production requirements related to the amount of land you live on.”

“We are doing a project to convert a golf course project to agricultural production”

“Farming is now the glamorous new profession.”

“This society spends an inordinate amount of money on ornamental landscaping, and we’re just transferring that money to produce food.”

“How much brainpower it takes to grow food was a big surprise to me.”

“When we tell people about the work we’re doing with agriculture at Sky and other places there are some who say ‘What could you be thinking about?’ and as many who say ‘I’ve been waiting for this all my life.’”

“Serenbe [a farm-based new community near Atlanta] is selling when nothing else is selling.”