Design First Walters fm qxd 2/26/04 7: 50 pm page I

Le Figaro
in 1863,
Baudelaire described the 
flaneur
as someone who
lived his life in the public world, strolling the boule-
vards, frequenting the cafés, bars and public build-
ings of Paris. He was anonymous in the urban
crowds but drew energy from the teeming urban life
all around him. (We should note in passing that this
was a male role; women – apart from prostitutes –
were not allowed this luxury of unaccompanied
movement in the nineteenth century city.) But
Baudelaire’s urban wanderer was not simply a passive
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spectator. The French poet stressed that his pedes-
trian searched the city with a lofty aim. He was look-
ing for ‘modernity’ in the metropolis, and in his
search the 
flaneur
did not merely consume urban
culture. He created it by his ‘passionate’ activity.
Multiply this individual by a population of thou-
sands in a city, or even in a suburban center, and the
possibility of an authentic public life in America is
tantalizingly within reach.
One of our chief ambitions as designers is to create
and maintain this public realm as a place where con-
temporary 
flaneurs
, of both sexes, can flourish, and
succeed in their quest of generating urban activity
and culture. This is where the issue of truly public
space is so vital. Private control over spaces that look
public but aren’t emasculates democratic participa-
tion in the life of the community.
One development that tries to achieve this goal
of meaningful and active public space is Birkdale
Village, in Huntersville, North Carolina, a suburban
community just north of Charlotte. It may not suc-
ceed in every test we apply for our idealized 
flaneur
,
but none the less, it is a brave attempt. Located near a
freeway interchange (a mark in its disfavor), Birkdale
supplies urban amenities to the suburban middle
class; it has gathered unto itself many aspects of the
traditional center that the tiny town of Huntersville
never possessed prior to its evolution into a burgeon-
ing bedroom community of 32 000 in 2002.
Like a traditional town center, the 52-acre (20.8
hectares) Birkdale Village, with its apartments and
offices over the stores, and a cinema at the end of
Main Street, physically connects via a grid of walk-
able streets to adjacent housing developments (see
Plate 4). But beneath this veneer of normality,
Huntersville is a town with extraordinary social
demographics. The town’s population is 86 percent
white and its median household income is a whop-
ping $72 000, considerably more than the regional
average. For comparison, in other Carolina communi-
ties like Winston-Salem the figures are 55 percent
white with a median income of $37 000. Spartanburg’s
demographics are 42 percent white with a median
income of $22 400. Huntersville is thus an urban
area that has a limited social spectrum of users and
inhabitants. Not surprisingly, the stores in Birkdale
Village are upmarket, and the rents for the apart-
ments are relatively high, but this exclusivity com-
bined with the sense of near-genuine urbanity has
bred great commercial success (see Plate 5).
The one important element that is missing is a
civic presence. There is no Town Hall, no library,
police station or post office. The library is isolated on
the other side of the freeway, while the other civic
functions remain rooted in the small downtown core,
three miles away, in a brave effort to stabilize and
retain that fleeting piece of history. However, on the
positive side, the infrastructure of streets and public
spaces in Birkdale Village has been taken over from
the developer by the town and are publicly owned
and maintained. They are truly public. They could,
for example, be the legal site for a political demon-
stration, an important test. The fact that these public
spaces have been created by means of private devel-
opment is not an issue. The problem only occurs
when the spaces that we use for public activities
remain in private hands.
Despite its positive impact on the community, sev-
eral local people and professionals worry that not
everybody can afford to live or shop in the new