| "Good morning! And in case I don’t see you, good afternoon, good evening and goodnight." The words are Truman Burbank’s daily greeting to his relentlessly perky neighbours, who are standing by the white picket fence outside their Victorian-style home in the fictitious town of Seahaven. Seahaven is an elaborate set, a complete artifice in which Truman unwittingly "stars" in a TV show in the film The Truman Show. Everyone and everything in his life is playing a role. The part of "Seahaven" is played by the real town of Seaside, Florida. It’s not listed as a cast member in the credits, but it plays an unmistakable character.
When the leaders of Seaside gave the filmmakers permission to cast Seaside as "Seahaven," it apparently never dawned on them that their town – which they had created in search of a nostalgic and elusive notion of "authenticity" – was to be represented as the absolute antithesis of anything authentic. The town founders, Darryl and Robert Davis, even have small cameos in the film. An article in the New Yorker around the time of the film’s release pointed out that the art department for the film added a bit of makeup (primarily signage and embellished storefronts), but otherwise, Seaside played itself. When shooting wrapped, the film crew started dismantling their extra touches, but the town asked them to leave the things in place – they liked what the film crew had done, and felt it made Seaside feel more like what they imagined it to be. The gestures that had been made in the name of artifice were being read as signifiers of authenticity.
Seaside was the first "New Urbanist" community, designed in the early 1980s by founding New Urbanists Andres Duany and Elizabeth Player-Zyberk. By the mid-1990s, New Urbanism was all the rage in planning and urban design circles. What had started out as half a dozen people sitting on a Victorian-style porch grew into the Congress for New Urbanism (CNU). By the time of the group’s fifth annual conference in Toronto in 1997, hundreds of delegates from 18 countries filled hotel rooms, and it received international media coverage. By 2005, it has largely become the received wisdom and conventional thinking of planners and urban designers (although, interestingly, not so much architects).
The CNU officially ratified and adopted its manifesto, the Charter of the New Urbanism, at its fourth annual meeting in 1996. The Charter has more than 10 commandments and fewer than 99 theses – 27 principles, to be precise. In and of themselves, it’s hard to take much exception to many of the principles – for example, "Streets and squares should be safe, comfortable and interesting to the pedestrian." It’s hard to say "No they shouldn’t" to that one. Others are more prescriptive and therefore much more open to debate, such as "Architecture… should grow from local climate, topography, history and building practice." Site sensitivity and specificity, sure – but tying contemporary architectural practice to local history and building practice is debatable. The problem with New Urbanism is not so much the principles in its Charter (not to let them off the hook), but the fundamental assumptions and premises behind them.
As New Urbanists are so fond of doing, let’s take a stroll down memory lane. Another Charter was adopted by another Congress, also at its fourth annual meeting, 63 years earlier. The Athens Charter of the Congres Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM) made radically different proposals, but the concerns were identical. The Athens Charter is all about trying to create healthy, happy communities populated by healthy, happy people living, working and playing healthy, happy lives.
The solutions the two groups arrived at could not be more different. For CIAM, it was the tower in the park with broad "efficient" streets between them. For the CNU, it’s narrow gridded streets lined with trees, front porches and picket fences. But both attempts are flawed in precisely the same way – a bedrock belief that built form can heal wounded psyches and magically create that oh-so-elusive thing called "community" (in itself a highly problematic term).
One of New Urbanism’s leading thinkers, Leon Krier, was in Calgary last month to speak to the annual conference of the Canadian Institute of Planners. Krier is New Urbanism’s attack dog – its most vitriolic critic of, well, everything except his own ideas. Here are just a few of his choice phrases: "modernism is a form of radical brainwashing," "modernism is a totalitarian ideology," "modernism operates through incapacitating people’s autonomy," "the political terror of modernist moralism," and "modernism is a systematic rape of man’s (sic) psychological and physiological makeup." You get the idea – he doesn’t like Modernism much. But while Krier condemns "modernist moralism," he says in the same discussion, "New Urbanist principles have the simplicity and practicality of moral precepts." Resorts to moral positions – whatever the topic of discussion – invariably make me uncomfortable and suspicious.
Principle 13 of the Charter of the New Urbanism reads, "Within neighbourhoods a broad range of housing types and price levels can bring people of diverse ages, races and incomes into daily interaction, strengthening the personal and civic bonds essential to an authentic community." Leon Krier calls Seaside one of the most successful New Urbanist projects. When I looked at Seaside’s official site last week, there were 34 properties for sale, ranging from $825,000 to $4.6 million US. Another of the "most successful" New Urbanist projects is Celebration, also in Florida. On their site last week, I could choose from "Classical, Colonial, Coastal, Craftsman, French and Victorian architectural styles." What those have to do with "local history and building practices" is beyond me. But at least it was more affordable, with "homes from the $400,000s to more than $1 million."
What does all this have to do with Calgary? Well, New Urbanism is putting down roots here – which I will go into next month. In the meantime, have a look at Garrison Woods or McKenzie Towne and see how they stand up to Principle 13. |
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