In the work of the New Urbanism, we start with the premise that buildings and the space between (streets and squares) must be a balanced ensemble of pavement, streetwalls, green and building walls. In the three projects we are presenting, we are looking at this fundamental relationship at the level of the Neighborhood, the District and the Corridor.


Neighborhood: Arboleda — King City, Calififornia

Arboleda, a new l20-acre Neighborhood on the edge of King City, is a farming community of 10,000 in
Monterey County, California. The existing town is a square mile gridded plan, with four main existing Neighborhoods aligned with a main street, bound together by schools where they overlap. Development in the 1950s–60s ignored the traditional grid pattern and created edges that were cauterized by building cul-de-sacs. The rears of houses “mooned” the agricultural greenbelt, with fences displaying a blank face to the open space view. Part of our task was to heal this seam.

There is a Spanish term, “ensanche,” which means to create an addition that ends up completely transforming the existing situation for the better. To do this required a careful study of existing conditions and examination of precedents for street types and blocks from regional examples, such as Pacific Grove, Monterey and Carmel. We were able to document a full catalogue of existing street types appropriate for the new Neighborhood: commercial street with diagonal parking, commercial street with parallel parking, parkway, street, edge street, and lane. These streets are, first and foremost, places. Their calibration of width, configuration, materials and definition by building types is what gives a Neighborhood its unique character. lt is important to get the streets right, because while buildings may change over time, streets are forever.

As in the existing Neighborhoods of King City, we used the school to bind the two halves of the Neighborhood. A parkway to the south of the project acts as a mediating element for the existing clipped edge and allows for that edge to be opened to new Neighborhood over time. A Neighborhood Center along the main Corridor that leads to Main Street offers a wide “throat” (with mixed-use buildings around a green) to catch as much activity and passing traffic as possible. The building types around this civic green are Neighborhood Center — two to three stories, with retail or office on the first floor and residential above.

There are two zones of Neighborhood General. Neighborhood General I is contiguous to Neighborhood
Center and has closer setbacks, fences, and more buildings that touch — courtyard buildings, townhouses and duplexes. Neighborhood General II has greater setbacks, no fences, and is mostly individual house forms. Neighborhood Edge is the least dense, with substantial setbacks, larger lots, no curbs, no sidewalk and fronts facing the agricultural greenbelt. The details of the streets in all cases reflect the particular density and character of each transect zone.

The code for Arboleda consists of one page for each transect zone, with both technical and illustrative diagrams provided for ease of administration. In addition, we have provided by request of the developer, who will build the majority of buildings, an architectural code that describes building types (courtyard, live-work, townhouse, etc.) and regional style (Monterey, Spanish Colonial Revival, and Craftsman). lt is unusual in our work to code style, but it is done in the interest of improving production housing and creating a strong link to the existing Neighborhoods by means of a common treatment, as well as the form of the building types and network of streets.

Finally it is worth noting again the example this project provides in its treatment of the edge. Léon Krier states that for a town, a center is a necessity; an edge is a luxury. A clear edge to nature provides not only a five- minute walk from edge to center, but a three-hour walk in nature from the edge. The turning of a stable edge to the greenbelt is a rare occurrence in California, but it is necessary to create a general understanding of what makes a town different from conventional sprawl development.

District: Los Alamos, New Mexico

Los Alamos is perhaps one of the ugliest towns in America, with one of the most beautiful settings in the world. It is composed of a number of mesas separated by steep canyons that give it the appearance of Greek islands in plan. Because of topography, conventional sprawl is not possible. However, the downtown imploded through standard development practices of the past 50 years. Los Alamos began as a closed “secret” city in the 1940s to develop the Manhattan Project. As befits a military town, it was laid out on a strict Roman castrum grid that created a fine grain of blocks and streets. It contained one of the first pedestrian shopping centers, which worked very well, as everything was within a five-minute walk. Over time a new shopping center was built a 10-minute walk away. This single act doomed the downtown as a functioning unit and created two Districts that required the constant use of vehicles for all daily activities.

The diagnostic drawings, consisting mostly of figure/fields of road networks, blocks and buildings, show very clearly the dysfunctional nature of this town. Over time the fine grid of streets became superblocks, with quarter-mile intersections over a mile length of Corridors. This automatically creates traffic that goes 55 mph (posted 35 mph) as well as a discouraging pedestrian environment. Another drawing shows that 70 percent of the downtown is asphalt — roads and parking lots. Fully one-third of the traffic in the downtown is cars going from one parking lot to the next. The amount of parking space keeps land value low and discourages density and mixed-use.

The present day confusion is created by use-based codes and streets that only respond to the care and feeding of automobiles. Our strategy for remaking the downtown focused on changing the area through the integration of street types and building types that would work together to create unique and memorable places. The Regulating Plan created four main Districts, based on intensity of use and the five-minute walking distance. There is a Civic District, Main Street District, lnfill Neighborhood, and a new Office and Residential District. All of these overlap but contain a combination of building types and intensity of uses that make each distinct. All of the streets are keyed to the character of each District, with the continuity provided by the main east/west parkway.

“Park once” is the strategy applied to remove asphalt and create land value. By building three new parking structures as civic infrastructure at strategic locations, development is encouraged to densify, and citizens can park once and take care of more than one activity without returning to their cars. Also, we encouraged the formalizing of streets that are de facto streets through existing parking lots (parking aisles). These can remain private but must have the same detailing as public streets. All of the street type specifications consist of engineering statistics, pictures of existing examples and description of the intent. These are then linked to building types.

The figure/field drawing of current-condition buildings shows a no man’s land. One is unable to discern where the roads are. We looked to Santa Fe for precedents for both street types and building types and found a wealth of vibrant examples. The plan of Santa Fe shows complete definition of the streets and plazas by a myriad of building types. It is completely mixed-use and fully occupied. It is this strategy (not the Santa Fe style) that we imported in the repair and rejuvenation of Los Alamos. The full range of civilized activities will be once again available to the citizens of Los Alamos, from the central marketplace of the new Main Street, to a District for office and housing, to a live-work District that encourages small business, to the shared experience of the civic District. A child, an elder, a single mother, a handicapped person, as well as the average Joe, can have a full public life linked to other citizens through beautiful streets defined by buildings of variety and harmony.

Corridor: Stone Avenue, Tucson, Arizona

This small one and a half day exercise looked at a very common situation of trying to fix a Corridor that had become dangerous and depressing. The existing conditions consisted of Speedway, a 60,000-car-per-day thoroughfare that connected west to the highway, and Stone Avenue, a north/south Corridor carrying 20,000 cars per day that went to and from downtown Tucson. This intersection represents an inflection in the development of Tucson from the more historic Neighborhood to conventional development. Surrounding the intersection is a park, a community college (with no public face), and various motels and run-down retail. This no-place is common throughout the West, where the continuous square mile grid creates Corridors with unlimited commercial development. This results in buildings that are one-third vibrant, one-third tired and one-third really crummy. Both the nature of the road and the building types along it prevent its changing to other, more appropriate and needed uses, such as higher density housing.

Initially, we were asked to take a “band-aid” approach to the intersection, a 100-foot swath of angry asphalt. We quickly realized no amount of painted walkways or public art would help — the intersection itself needed to be radically changed into a place. We again looked at precedents for road and places, and as this part of the West has little but roads, we were forced to import examples. The first idea was a Dupont Circle (Washington, D.C.) type of intersection. This creates a place, but would not be defined enough by the surrounding two-to-three-story buildings (as well as being hampered by the excessive level of traffic) to be a usable pedestrian space.

The second example was the New England Green. This would create shaped green spaces off of the main flow of traffic. The negative feature of this solution is the gap created by the Corridors. The final idea was also borrowed from Washington, D.C. This consisted of an underpass of two lanes each way acting as an unimpeded thoroughfare along Speedway to serve the highway traffic. The cost of this is comparable to overpasses that the city engineers are building at other intersections, with much less disruption to the fabric of surrounding Neighborhoods.

The most important advantage to this solution is that it turns Stone Avenue into more of a local street that can be cranked at a 45-degree angle to create a “university main street” where before there was only a vacant intersection. This provides terminated vistas from all roads and a new front door for the community college. New building types that can be appropriate to higher-density housing create a mediating edge from the Corridors to the Neighborhoods. Motion is balanced by buildings in a particular pattern.

Corridors in the West (and elsewhere) often have the appearance of continual blight. We must effect a total transformation of these Corridors, from the centerline of the pavement to deep within the Neighborhood, to create real estate and civic positives instead of the wasteland that presently exists. This can only be done through place-making, not engineering.