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particular
area. It’s a well-known paradox in American social
attitudes that citizens complain loudly against sprawl
and the loss of open space, and equally loudly about
the higher-density development that is the most
effective solution to the problem (see Plate 9).
Nevertheless, a good professional must strive to
garner public input, and as noted earlier, a lot of this
work involves public education. The best way to edu-
cate the public is in public – to allow them to see the
design process in action, and learn how variables are
balanced, priorities assessed, and the various criteria
established. Our working method allows the public
to watch us at work, and to give daily, even hourly
feedback on the ideas taking shape. At its best, the
floodlight of public design dialogue can illuminate
many murky corners of private prejudice and misun-
derstanding, and provide opportunities for a more
honest and productive debate. In the majority of
instances some accord can be reached, but we’ve
never been able to please all participants.
But we try, and to this end we have four guiding
principles for every charrette.
1. Involve everyone from the start.
2. Work concurrently and cross-functionally.
3. Work in short feedback loops.
4. Work in detail.
First, we get all the points of view into the open for
vigorous discussion so that elected officials, planning
and design professionals and concerned citizens can
understand the full scope of the problem. Anyone
who might have an opinion or be affected by the plan
should be involved from the very beginning. We
arrange specific consultation times with various
stakeholder groups, while design activity is running
constantly in the background, accessible to all on the
other side of the room. By making people roll up
their sleeves and work with the design team, the
process gains mutual authorship and benefits from a
shared vision.
Second, we operate with a multi-disciplinary
design team that usually includes architects, urban
designers, planners, landscape architects, traffic plan-
ners, and real estate experts. Sometimes we add other
environmental specialists if the task demands it, and
we particularly welcome the advice of local artists,
who often have a unique perspective to contribute.
During the charrette all these specialists become gen-
eralists, assimilating each other’s expertise and work-
ing across professional boundaries on problems and
opportunities that arise as the charrette progresses.
Third, we work quickly, getting tentative solutions
to problems pinned up on the wall for discussion as
soon as possible, often after only a few hours.
Members of the public need to be able to propose
ideas and see them designed briskly for their review
and comment by others. We hold pin-up sessions
every evening to gather public input on the preferred
direction(s) for development based upon what we
heard during the day.
Fourth, working in detail has all the advantages
we’ve mentioned previously. Only by designing to a
level of detail that includes building types, urban
blocks and public spaces as well as the big picture
issues of circulation, transportation land use, land-
scape preservation and other major public ameni-
ties can opportunities be revealed and fatal flaws
reduced or eliminated. This level of detail is achiev-
able in the compressed timeframe because of our
typological framework. We bring with us to the
process development and spatial typologies that we
believe have very wide applicability. This general
base of information enables us to move quickly
into site specific detail. We introduced the four
typological categories earlier in Chapter 4: they are
Traditional Neighborhoods, Mixed-Use Centers,
Districts and Corridors.
Traditional Neighborhoods
The traditional neighborhoods typology comprises a
compact residential area with a variety of housing
types and some supporting service and civic uses like
small shops, libraries and churches. It is designed to
accommodate pedestrians and public transit as well
as travel by car, and like most New Urbanist design-
ers, and New York sociologist Clarence Perry before
us, we base the size of neighborhoods on the 1/4-mile
measurement as the distance the typical adult can
walk from center to edge in approximately five min-
utes. Completing the circle with this radius creates an
area of approximately 125 acres (50 hectares) and
comprises about 1000 homes at an average density of
8 dwellings per acre (52 persons per hectare). This
figure anticipates a range of dwelling types from
CHAPTER SIX
●
URBAN DESIGN IN THE REAL WORLD
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some single-family houses on medium-sized lots
(1/3-acre), a larger proportion of single-family
dwellings on smaller lots (1/4–1/8-acre), plus town-
homes and apartments, and computes to an average
population of about 2600 residents. These are densi-
ties similar to those of typical European cities noted
in Chapter 5, and thus mark a significant break with
current American practice. Figures 3.2 and 3.3 illus-
trate the typologically similar neighborhood design
concepts of Clarence Perry from the 1920s and
Duany and Plater-Zyberk from the 1990s, and it’s
interesting to note that Perry envisioned 5000 resi-
dents living in his neighborhood, nearly twice as
many as our contemporary total.
However, this increase in density is not such a
radical shift as it might first appear. As twenty-first
century demographics in the USA move rapidly
towards more, smaller households, developers’ organ-
izations expect the demand for homes on smaller lots
to increase. Surveys of American homebuyers have
indicated that residents are as satisfied with housing
in developments averaging six or seven units per acre
(39–45 persons per hectare) as they are with densities
of three or four dwellings per acre (19–26 persons
per hectare) 
if
the smaller lots are balanced by
good amenities and public spaces (Ewing, in
Schmitz: p. 11).
Smaller lot size also helps in the important quest
for dwellings that are more affordable not only to
lower paid workers but also to the middle class, who
are increasingly being priced out of markets in several