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informed
by history. This historical sense, and its
awareness of intellectual and physical precedent, shapes
and enriches the ideas we bring to bear on contempo-
rary urban planning problems. But while context and
precedent are crucially important, designers need not be
slaves to perceived history. Simply wrapping contempo-
rary buildings in historical wallpaper diminishes archi-
tectural and urban design to the level of pastiche, always
a dangerous tendency in postmodern design. It is
important to distinguish between using precedent cre-
atively in community design (good) and retreating into
nostalgic formulas (bad). Accordingly we try to clarify
this difference throughout the text as we discuss con-
cepts and methods.
Serious scholars of urban history will find little new
material here that hasn’t been covered in many other
histories and polemics (Blake, 1974; Booker, 1980;
Hughes, 1980; Ravetz, 1980; Coleman, 1985; Hall,
1988; Campbell, 1993; Kunstler, 1993; Lubbock, 1995;
Gold, 1997). But we review this story with a reader in
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mind for whom this may be unfamiliar territory. And
we approach the discussion with a particular question
in mind: why do we teach our students the opposite
of what we were taught by our professors thirty-five
years ago? We were taught the doctrine of modernism
only to spend our professional lives fighting against its
urban legacy in our towns and cities.
We now embrace the same principles of city design
rejected by modernist pioneers. Instead of trying to
obliterate traditional public space (the so-called
‘death of the street’ so eagerly sought by Le Corbusier
and others), we conceive the city once again as a
defined, if discontinuous, network of urban spaces –
a public realm of streets and squares. In an expanding
world of virtual realities and electronic spaces, we
believe the creation of real places for public life is
more important than ever. But is our advocacy of tra-
ditional urban forms merely the swing of the historical
pendulum? Is it a transient phenomenon, a collection
of concepts that flourishes, then withers as we move
back to a revived, neo-modernist position in a few
decades? Or have we rediscovered something funda-
mental about cities and the human need for public
life in public space? The cliché about not understand-
ing where you’re going if you don’t know where
you’ve been has never been more relevant.
Our perspective on problems and opportunities fac-
ing American towns and cities is sharpened by com-
parisons to British practice regarding urban expansion
and revitalization of older areas. As we noted earlier,
several American dilemmas are similar to British prob-
lems, while others are substantially different – bred of
disparate geographies and cultural priorities. We hope
these themes of comparison and contrast between
American and British urban experiences render the
book valuable for audiences in both countries. British
readers can relate American lessons to their own situa-
tions, and American professionals can understand
ways in which British practice might inform their own
daily battles for better design in cities and suburbs.
We appreciate the privilege of working in commu-
nities, designing with citizens in public forums to forge
visions, templates and policies that will guide the
future growth of the places where the participants live
and work. We also enjoy working within a complex
intellectual lineage traceable to previous centuries. We
take pleasure in knowing that our small efforts are part
of a much larger narrative of town building.
We said at the beginning that this book is aimed at
architects, planners, developers, planning commis-
sioners, elected officials, and civic-minded citizens.
Students of architecture and planning constitute
another very important audience. These are the young
men and women whose charge it is to continue the
fight to make better, more humane, ecological and
beautiful cities. Whichever group you belong to, and
whether you are reading this book in America, Britain,
or elsewhere, we hope you find within its pages some
inspiration to serve a community, large or small, and
help it to grow more smartly. By this, all of us benefit.
DESIGN FIRST: DESIGN-BASED PLANNING FOR COMMUNITIES