Secure Settlements

The image of a stable and safe environment is one goal that most developments in Latin America have sought to provide their residents. Yet today’s ecological and economic crises generate ever-increasing levels of social insecurity, whether real or perceived, and pose a threat which open, pedestrian-friendly communities – long a hallmark of the traditional urban fabric – will be unable to resist.

Historically, among the most enduring secure settlements have been the bastides, or fortified new towns, most commonly found in Europe, then later exported to portions of the New World and of Asia by the colonists.

Moreover, in historic traditional neighborhoods, building types forming a continuous street frontage provided a secure edge to the public realm while maintaining a pedestrian friendly environment. Security and safety is enhanced with “eyes on the street”, and the more private areas sited behind the front massing.

Suburbia’s main response to issues of security and safety has been the single-use gated subdivision. In higher density locations multi-family buildings are often secured technologically with phone and keypad controlled access points. Unfortunately, instead of creating vibrant, active communities, these strategies have engendered many places with the dour character of streetscapes with blank walls, automated vehicular entrances and fewer uses at grade. Nonetheless, it is possible to address rising security concerns with a sustainable response aligned with Smart Growth’s advocacy of interconnected, mixed-use, and walkable environments.

History shows that societal instability has been a constant companion to urbanism and there is a long menu of more sensitive planning techniques from which to draw inspiration.

The following pages depict some of the strategies DPZ has incorporated into its community masterplans, where a safe and secure environment is required, while balancing these issues with the desire for an urban fabric that is authentic and open as far as possible.

Courtyard Houses

As noted above, the courtyard house, also known as the casa de patio in Hispanic settlements, is a building type that offers privacy and security at the scale of the individual building. Instead of centering the house on the lot, resulting in often less-than-usable front and side setbacks, the massing of the house typically is distributed along the lot boundaries instead, recapturing lot areas that would otherwise be given to unusable setbacks and making them habitable and private in the form of a central courtyard. And when grouped in a row along a street, they create a continuous, securable yet pedestrian-friendly street frontage.

The Perimeter Block

Apart from securing a single house, security may be provided at the scale of the streetblock. Under this category, among the most common typologies is the perimeter block, also known as the “wrap” or the Texas Donut (having originated in DPZ’s project Legacy Town Center, in Plano, Texas). The perimeter block is typically a mixed use building occupying an entire street block, with residential use above commercial/retail. The building massing is placed along the perimeter of the block, or wrapped along the perimeter (hence the name), forming a continuous edge along which ingress/egress points might be controlled. As a higher-density building type, the majority of the required parking is provided via an embedded parking garage (one garage serves two Texas Donuts; the garage is hidden from ates private courtyards within the block with amenities such as gardens or pools for the exclusive use of residents. Privacy and security is this afforded at the streetblock level, while maintaining an open, pedestrian-friendly urban fabric.

There are several variations to the perimeter block. Among the various permutations include:

Subdividing the streetblock into smaller wrapped sub-blocks, each with its own set of access gates emerging into a motor court. Building types used might comprise portions of a perimeter block with liner apartments, apartment villas, and/or townhouses/courtyard houses. DPZ’s Bermuda Village in Coral Gables, Florida is an example of this strategy.

Security Beyond the Streetblock

Apart from achieving security at the individual streetblock, traditional communities may offer secured sets of streetblocks, as well as secured sub-neighborhoods. The bottom image to the left shows Phase 1 – out of seven phases – of the proposed new community of Bairro Santa Paula in Brazil. The diagram shows how the masterplan has been designed with a traditional urban pattern, combined might be provided at the scale of the individual house (the yellow line); at the scale of the streetblock (the pink line); at the scale of the sub-neighborhood or enclave (several streetblocks grouped together) (the red line); or at the scale of the neighborhood (the purple line).

Conclusion

As demonstrated above, there are numerous safety strategies compatible with the New Urbanism that may be applied at various urban scales and across the Transect. How a dwelling faces an adjoining street and the manner in which curing a single house, a whole city block, and even an entire neighborhood. The goal of drawing any number of “defensible perimeters” should be to ensure that the interactive, vibrant, and diverse public realm of a given place is not…

Green by Design

Green By Design: Resort towns such as Seaside, Rosemary Beach, WaterColor, and Alys Beach are unique among community types; they embody an idealized environment integrating urbanism with nature. These towns are known for being models for compact, walkable, and diverse communities, but not all realize that they are also among the few built, explicitly environmental communities. Each town incorporated and implemented green development practices before they were popular or required by regulation. They and the 30-A region have pushed the boundaries of environmental planning, urban design, and architecture, becoming private-sector laboratories for ideas in non-subsidized sustainable development. As society (and the market) engages the 21st century, Florida’s EcoCoast has already tested, refined, and developed them.

The Lexicon

Most active new urbanists have seen bits and pieces of The Lexicon of the New Urbanism. Anyone who has attended an Andres Duany presentation in recent years, for example, has seen some of the diagrams. In June of 1997, Duany first presented photocopies of this work in progress at the Congress for the New Urbanism in Toronto. At the time, Duany called the work The Technique of Town Planning: The Operating System of the New Urbanism, and announced that it would be completed within a year and available free of charge over the Internet. Two and a half years have gone by, and The Lexicon of the New Urbanism, as it now is called, is still not complete, although it has been extensively revised. For the first time, it is widely available to students and practitioners of the New Urbanism in a hard copy draft format. While not free, The Lexicon is a bargain at $99. What is The Lexicon?

It is equal parts book, dictionary, how-to manual, and magnum opus. It is the planning philosophy of Andres Duany, the firm Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company, and Duany’s many colleagues systematically diagramed and boiled down to simple language. No town plans, photographs, or renderings are provided. Everything is reduced to concise prose and diagrams. However, the density of information is such that only true New Urbanism students and aficionados will ever read the work cover to cover or take the time to fully understand it. The Lexicon is urbanism made systematic. Every element is defined and categorized. Every concept is named and diagramed. Some people will find this irritating, but the New Urbanism is nothing if not a rational system of creating urban places. It is based on the idea that the streets, buildings, and public places can be measured and coded to produce specific outcomes – namely human-scale, walkable communities. Those who complain that the New Urbanism relies too heavily on traditional architecture should note that The Lexicon does not address architectural style at all. The section on buildings describes the types of structures that fit into a neighborhood, their characteristics, platting, and relationships to block, street, and property lines. But any style of building, from classical to modern, could be designed in harmony with these principles. Every profession requires an established common language, not only to gain standing, but to communicate effectively, according to Duany. The Lexicon of the New Urbanism is an attempt by Duany and his associates to standardize that language for new urbanists. The Lexicon is not a commercially successful work – at least not yet – but it’s likely to be highly influential in the field. Duany estimates that production expenses have amounted to nearly $200,000, not counting work by the authors. Duany had plenty of help. He lists as contributors the staff of Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co. (which holds the copyright), Stefanos Polyzoides (cochair with Duany of the Congress for the New Urbanism nomenclature task force), traffic experts Walter Kulash and Rick Chellman, transit expert Bill Lieberman, and retail expert Robert Gibbs. Other contributors were Todd Zimmerman and Laurie Volk on social issues, Douglas Duany and Stephanie Bothwell on landscape, Paul Murrain, David Sargeant, Thomas Comitta, and Gary Greenan on general issues, and Phillip Reynold, Gianni Longo, and Peter Hetzel as editors.

Smart Code

The SmartCode is an integrated land development ordinance into which zoning, subdivision regulations, urban design, public works standards and basic architectural controls are integrated into one comprehensive and streamlined document. As a unified ordinance, it effectively spans and coordinates the regional, city, neighborhood and building scale of development.

In conjunction with developing master plans for mixed-use communities, a significant aspect of DPZ’s work involves its innovative use of planning regulations and codes. Both broad-based (such as the SmartCode) and project-specific (such as DPZ’s Urban and Architectural Regulations), these codes make projects more successful and ease their implementation.

The SmartCode in particular is an integrated land development ordinance into which zoning, subdivision regulations, urban design, public works standards and basic architectural controls are integrated into one comprehensive and streamlined document. As a unified ordinance, it effectively spans and coordinates the regional, city, neighborhood, and building scales of development. The SmartCode enables the implementation of a community’s vision by coding the specific outcomes desired in particular places. It allows for distinctly different approaches in different areas within the community, unlike a one-size-fits-all conventional code. To this end, it is meant to be locally customized, or calibrated, to suit the local development context and conditions. This gives the SmartCode unusual political power, as it permits buy-in from stakeholders, while producing walkable and mixed-use neighborhoods with transportation options, conservation of open lands, local character, housing diversity and vibrant downtowns. 

Conversely, the SmartCode prevents sprawl development, automobile dependency, loss of open lands, monotonous subdivisions, deserted downtowns and unsafe streets and parks. Being a “form-based code”, it addresses primarily the physical form of building and community. It is thus unlike conventional zoning codes based on single use and density allocations, which have caused systemic problems over the years by making mixed use and walkable neighborhoods inadvertently illegal. 

Sprawl Repair

For more than three decades, DPZ has been designing projects within contexts fragmented by automobile-oriented, segregated-use sprawl. In crafting a more robust public realm for both public and private clients, DPZ has assembled a toolbox of techniques for completing and retrofitting that acknowledges that repair is possible at all scales, from the region to the neighborhood, and from the block to the building. Sprawl Repair recognizes the extent to which outdated zoning codes have been precluding the creation of complete, diverse communities, and the need to change these rules.

In tune with 21st Century imperatives for sustainability and resource conservation, Sprawl Repair accepts the challenge to salvage, repurpose and transform even the most poorly conceived subdivisions, office parks, shopping centers, and dead malls.

Through the CNU Sprawl Retrofit Initiative, DPZ has been leading the charge to repair suburbia by encouraging tool kits that foster more livable, economically functional, and ecologically sound habitats through the lenses of design, policy, financing, and infrastructure.

Light Imprint

Light Imprint New Urbanism is a practical DPZ planning and development strategy to more effectively, economically, and sustainably manage stormwater and infrastructure investments. Light Imprint respects, incorporates and enhances existing terrain, geographical conditions, and hydrology within a project’s green network. 

Calibrated across the Transect, Light Imprint planning/engineering techniques balance environmental considerations with design objectives such as connectivity and a well-defined and active public realm. A Light Imprint toolkit matrix explains how natural drainage, traditional engineering infrastructure and filtration practices are employed collectively at the scales of the sector, the neighborhood and the block. This toolkit offers a set of context-sensitive design solutions to avoid expensive underground stormwater facilities and the associated engineering costs via the strategic placement and design of green space and hardscaping.

Lean Urbanism

Recognizing that the 20th Century has left a legacy of bureaucracy and challenges to wealth creation for most, Lean Urbanism is an initiative advocating small-scale, incremental community-building that requires fewer resources to incubate and mature. It seeks to lower barriers to make it easier to start businesses and to provide more attainable housing and development. “Making Small Possible” is the ethos of this initiative that is rooted in inclusivity, open-sourcing, empowerment, and a focus on gradual and ongoing improvement.

Administered by the non-profit Center for Applied Transect Studies (CATS), the Project for Lean Urbanism seeks to restore common sense to the processes of development, building, and entrepreneurship. A primary goal is to reduce the time, cost, and effort required to complete small-scale projects by providing tools to work around onerous financial, bureaucratic, and regulatory processes. These instruments are being made freely available to governments and organizations, entrepreneurs, and to small builders or homeowners without the know-how to overcome hurdles and who seek economical, low-tech ways to build well.

Agrarian Urbanism

Allocating agricultural activity across the Transect, Agrarian Urbanism advances a method of sustainable community design around food production– from a neighborhood’s center to its rural edge. Striking a chord with a growing movement, this initiative addresses concerns about the impacts of over-reliance on mass food distribution, environmental contamination, food security, food-associated health concerns, and other related social inequities (e.g. access to food by those with limited mobility).

Conceived from an urban design perspective, Agrarian Urbanism offers a range of options and regulatory tools that facilitate a neighborhood’s participation in agricultural activity, from a simple window box to community gardens and even larger scale farming cooperatives. Using typical means such as association documents to re-allocate funding otherwise spent on ornamental landscaping, each household could participate in food cultivation to varying degrees, according to residential typology and land area occupied. In search of reducing food miles and possibly ensuring a degree of food independence and survivability, a community might even choose to build its own local economy around food production, processing and sales using these techniques.