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Tim Cavanaugh | February 10, 2005

Stephen Town and Randal O'Toole break into the "Safescape," and steal everything but the drapes.

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|2.10.05 @ 3:56PM|#

So this town is growing at such a rate that a public school and a shopping center spring up next to the cul-de-sac in short order, but we're asked to believe that the bike path, and only the bike path, is the cause of the increased crime?

That, and the 12 fold increase in a carefully selected period, make me suspect there's some cherry picking going on.

The authors make an awful lot of mistakes in defining certain design elements as characteristic of "New Urbanism," "Radiant City," "TND," and "Defensible Space" theories - mistakes that are common enough and significant enough to seriously undermine their thesis.

There is a very useful kernel of truth, though - for the "eyes on the street" strategy to work, the public space needs to be both visible enough and busy enough to make the area unattractive for mischief. A neighborhood of single family homes at suburban densities certainly lacks the population density and mix of uses necessary to actually produce enough eyes to keep the street adequately monitored, unless that public space is extremely visually open, like a public street.

|2.10.05 @ 4:15PM|#

"New Urbanists eagerly helped write zoning codes that forbade things that had previously been mandated�broad streets, low densities, separation of residential from commercial uses�while mandating things that had formerly been forbidden, such as narrow streets, high densities, and mixed uses."

Here's your basic anectdote (valued at whatever you value anectdotal evidence):

I live in Kirkland, WA. I work in Queen Anne, Seattle, WA.

My neighborhood in Kirkland is "broad streets, low densities, separation of residential from commercial uses," and is damn hard to get into. There is exactly one street that accesses it, and all traffic into the neighborhood passes through 2 key intersections.

It's quiet, almost crime-free, safe, and pleasant to walk in. We go for long walks every morning with our dog.

Queen Anne is "narrow streets, high densities, and mixed uses." The streets are so damn narrow, it's hard to drive down them, because two-way traffic on a street that's only wide enough for one car really, really sucks. The yards are all tiny, the houses are right up against one another. There's a lot of public space, and a lot of mixed commercial and residential along the major streets through QA (including *the* major street, Queen Anne Avenue). It's chock full of crime, noise, traffic and traffic accidents, and is gradually falling into a scruffy blighted state. I don't walk here if I can avoid it, because it's just generally unpleasant. Its only saving grace is that it's on top of a very steep hill, and thus difficult for criminally-minded foot traffic to reach.

I would never live in Queen Anne. A coworker of mine who lives here has had his car stolen twice from the street in front of his house. I've left my car at home unlocked for a week without driving it.

|2.10.05 @ 4:16PM|#

I just cannot believe the consistency of the errors these authors make.

New Urbanism does not often include "large public areas" in neighbohoods. Small public areas, like pocket parks, in neighborhoods, yes. Large public areas, like plazas and large parks, in downtowns and business districts, yes. But the incorporation of large public areas into neighborhoods is a Radiant City/City Beautiful/Automobile Suburb feature, as seen in the World Trade Center plaza or the huge lawns around Urban Renewal housing towers that Jacobs skewers. This makes a big difference, since small parks can be controlled and observed by the houses surrounding them, while large spaces tend to become No Man's Lands.

Second, every New Urbanist community I've ever heard of incorporates residential-only streets, within walking distance of mixed use districts. The recognition that some people want a single family home, on its own lot, on a quiet residential street is hardly unique to anti-urbanists. This housing option has proven itself to be very popular with exactly those populations - empty nesters, families with children - that Town and O'Toole claim are avoiding neo-trad developments.

Third, empty nesters are one of the largest segments of the market for housing in urban, mixed-use districts. A lot of city lovers bought houses for the purpose of raising kids, and are thrilled at the opportunity for a more convenient, interesting residential option.

|2.10.05 @ 4:26PM|#

joe,

What exactly is a "residential-only" street? Does it have to be gated or cul-de-sac'ed?

|2.10.05 @ 4:26PM|#

Lower crime rates in secluded residential enclaves vs. downtowns does not mean that auto-dependent suburban design lowers crime overall. Instead, it just shifts its location. The commercial space that isn't built in a residential district is going to be built somewhere. If the same amount of crime occurs, but it is shifted from one district to another, what have we really gained from a public policy standpoint?

Of course, the highest crime areas you find are where old mixed use districts have been "renewed" into single use residential towers surrounded by "no mans lands," which makes the claim that the mixing of uses promotes crime a little weak.

|2.10.05 @ 4:28PM|#

Russ, I was using the term to describe a street in which only homes are allowed. It can be any kind of street. Traditional and neo-trad design often has main streets that mix residential and commercial uses, with side streets running between them lined with homes.

|2.10.05 @ 4:39PM|#

"The result was his 1972 book Defensible Space, which showed that the safest neighborhoods maximized private space and minimized common zones."

Not quite. "Defensible Space," which you all need to read, along with Jacob's book, broke down space into four categories - public (like a sidewalk), semi-public (like a front walk), semi-private (like a front porch), and private (like a living room). These terms refer not to legal ownership, but to the degree of control that private parties normally subject them to. Thus, you can demand that somebody leave the walkway to your front steps just like you can demand they leave your living room, but you probably won't. A stranger walking up to your front door gets a greeting, while a stranger in your living room gets shot.

So, the theory behind "Defensible Space" is that these different categories of space need to be clearly delineated, and the design of the space and barriers support their use as appropriate for the category. For example, someone walking up to your front door should feel, from the layout, that he is in your space, and you should feel perfectly comfortable asking him to leave, but not so invaded by his presence that you are fearful. Pruitt-Igoe failed because the design of the place made thugs feel perfectly safe walking right into somebody else's building, while making the resident feel like it would be inappropriate to challenge the presence of someone lurking in the hall outside their door.

Nowhere is it recommended that public space be minimized, or private space maximized, as the authors of the article contend.

|2.10.05 @ 4:58PM|#

Joe,

The idea of 4 levels of space (public to private) is compelling. It seems that from a psychological standpoint, that would be good information to have when creating a security layout (at what point intruders feel that they are invading "your" space prior to actually being in your living room).

The mini-park idea, at least in Seattle, doesn't work well. Rarely do they get used, they are usually championed by one or a few people in a nieghborhood (who want to have "greenspace") who then fail to maintain them, and any drug dealer can hang out in them unmolested because they are a city park.

Wall to wall (or fence to fence) private ownership seems (though looks may be wrong) to work the best in stopping crime; with no "public" areas, anyone not welcome will get the boot in short order. Criminals are religated to the public street corners.

|2.10.05 @ 5:03PM|#

OK, so you mean "residential" by zoning rather than by traffic.

So what design techniques (short of gating or cul-de-sac'ing) can give your residentially-zoned street a higher percentage of residential traffic? A street lined with homes isn't quiet if it's a nice route, driving or walking, to the commerical areas. And a street lined with multi-family housing isn't all that quiet and crime-reduced even if there is no commercial for blocks, like much of the West Fenway.

(I am asking, not criticizing. I'm just observing that if people want quiet and low-crime, the more isolation the more likely.)

|2.10.05 @ 5:04PM|#

WSD, some small neighborhood parks work very well. Some streetcorners aren't very welcoming to criminals, either. The key is to make those legally-public spaces function as semi-public spaces, meaning that the locals feel, and exert, a certain level of control over them. (Sidewalks may not have been a good example of public space. I live on a side street in a traditional neighborhood, and if someone were to loiter on the sidewalk, or even in the street, for more than a couple minutes, he'd have a dozen pairs of eyes on him, and after a little while, someone would likely give him a friendly greeting and ask if they can help him). When your modus operendi involves standing around inconspicuously, and the behavior of everyone around you makes you realize that you stick out like a sore thumb, you tend to find a different location.

|2.10.05 @ 5:12PM|#

"he'd have a dozen pairs of eyes on him, and after a little while, someone would likely give him a friendly greeting and ask if they can help him)"

Where do you live? In my part of the country, people work all day and most houses a empty from 7:30 to 6:00. There aren't any eyes to watch the street. As for the feeling of control over the mini parks, you must have missed that I live in Seattle, the home of go-along-to-get-along attitudes. Everyone here will grouse(sp) and a few will write letters, but nobody actually does anything to make it better (or smarter).

We pride ourselves on our niceness, but the downside is that nobody will get of thier couch until the bulldozer is steaming down the street.

|2.10.05 @ 5:16PM|#

Russ D, actually, I meant "residential" by land use. As for your question, one good technique is the single-block street, a side street that connects one through street with another. You get the transportation benefit of an alternate access route when needed (and easy movement across the neighborhood for residents walking to the neighbors' or the corner store), but the street itself doesn't really go anywhere outsiders would want to go. A system of one way streets that prevent commuters on the main drag from turning down the side streets works very well. Note how both of these techniques tend to make the public right of way itself more like semi-public space.

Also, though the authors are quick to dismiss it, design features like front porches, houses close to the street (close meaning, close enough to carry on a comfortable conversation between someone in the front doorway and someone on the sidewalk), narrow streets, and sidewalks that actually get used (because there are places to walk to) make people less comfortable cutting through the street (ever find yourself turning down your car radio when you turn onto certain steets?), and less comfortable hanging out unless they live there or are visiting someone.

|2.10.05 @ 5:23PM|#

WS Dave, no stay at home moms? No old people? No one who works at a home office? Has a shop in the garage? That's too bad. Jane Jacobs warned about this in "Great American Cities" - that uniformity in housing age, design, style, and value breeds uniformity in economic class and work habits, resulting in uniform periods when nobody is home.

As for those parks, drug dealers don't generally run people out of active, beloved parks, but occupy vacant ones. I'm not saying the design of the parks should encourage people to confront drug dealers, but that they should encourage people to give a shit about the park, want to be there, take care of it, and otherwise occupy it in such a way that the drug dealer doesn't feel like it's a cool place for him to do business in. Yours, apparently, doesn't inspire that type of use. I'm curious why.

|2.10.05 @ 5:41PM|#

joe,

Wow. I have first-hand knowledge of those techniques being utter failures. One-way only inconveniences drivers for one block (which ain't an inconvenience) and they wind up getting used for parking to avoid the meters and garages; all the parking restrictions meant jack since there were more violators than could possibly be ticketed or towed. Perhaps they work better in Boston with its confusing street layout.

|2.10.05 @ 5:48PM|#

Joe,

"no stay at home moms? No old people? No one who works at a home office? Has a shop in the garage?"

It's mostly families with school aged kids where both parents (when there are two) work. It's also a "poor" part of town, so less chance of self-empoyement (home office or shop). There are a few people home (I'm a stay-at-home dad) but considering the community council averages one meeting every 18 months, most people are "too busy" to care (even about where they live). It's less about uniformity, and more that even in old warm and fuzzy (Seattle), nobody really gives a sh**.

As for the mini-parks, the "greenspace" that everyone around here insists on pushes the houses further apart, so that a "typical" block may only have 4 dwellings on it.

"drug dealers don't generally run people out of active, beloved parks, but occupy vacant ones."
"Yours, apparently, doesn't inspire that type of use. I'm curious why."

I wonder that myself. The best I've been able to come up with is that Seattle is a very actively sendintary city. The sport-os crowd to the playing fields, while the stroller moms go to the long walk parks. Nobody (with the exception of the occasional preschool or daycare) actually uses the mini-parks because it's usually too cold (or too hot) to have a picnic. They're not good for much else. Even the kiddy groups think twice because of the "big scary" society that we live in (child abductions and such). They'd rather just build they're own play area on thier own private proprty where they have some control over who is there. And a fence.

The mini-parks just end up as a drain on park resources, while nobody actually uses them. They are the fancy of a few activists who want to create a "community", and when the "community" doesn't materialize, the activist lose interest.

|2.10.05 @ 5:50PM|#

Don't know much about whether the article was well-written or trash. I just want to make a comment that I've lost ~15 lbs in the last few months. Which is funny, because I now have a car! Amazing that having to walk everywhere and take the bus didn't help me shed any pounds, but having a car to cut my commute times by over a third gives me extra time to actually exercise. Not to mention making it easier to go grocery shopping to eat healthy and whatnot.

Of course, I live in Phoenix, so I suppose it'd be different if I lived in San Francisco or Boston.

What do the urban planners have to say about that?!? :) (And you know I'm just playin' with ya', joe.)

fyodor|2.10.05 @ 6:00PM|#

Lower crime rates in secluded residential enclaves vs. downtowns does not mean that auto-dependent suburban design lowers crime overall. Instead, it just shifts its location. The commercial space that isn't built in a residential district is going to be built somewhere. If the same amount of crime occurs, but it is shifted from one district to another, what have we really gained from a public policy standpoint?

joe, this paragraph of yours seems to imply (in combination with the article) that by living next to a business I would be decreasing the chances of crime for the business but increasing it for me. Since living in a secluded residential district isn't likely to shift crime to where I work, what incentive do I have to not live in such a place (focusing only on the factor of minimizing crime for me)?

|2.10.05 @ 6:05PM|#

Wow, this seems to have touched a hot button for joe. Must be into New Urbanism or whatever the buzzterm is.

As another Seattle person I agree completely, from personal experience, with the examples given by ilsidor about Kirkland vs Queen Anne, and WSDave about the well-intentioned "mini-parks". Those miniparks downtown get used by the cubicle workers to eat their lunch in during the day. At night the commuters leave town, the ones that live downtown lock themselves into their security apartments, and the parks get taken over by the street people, crack dealers and assorted thugs. Unless you're one of those you're nuts to enter one after the sun goes down.

A personal example: my parents live in one of the suburbs to the north, on a cul-de-sac with nuclear family homes. A couple of weeks ago a neighbor a few houses down-- someone recently moved in, whom they didn't even know previously--was smoking a cigarette on the porch around 11pm. She noticed some young guys casing one of my father's cars on the street. The kids left when they saw her. The woman came up to the house and warned my folks of what was going on. (They thanked her by sending her a nice batch of cookies the next day, and now they put the car in the garage.) Do you really think that this would happen in one of the "new urban" areas? Hell, you probably wouldn't even KNOW whose car it was, nor know which of the locked security apartments they lived in. Do you really think many people are going to call the cops, wait around, fill out reports? The prevailing mindset would be "mind your own business and don't get involved", for a whole bunch of perfectly valid reasons.

Last example: I work in the University District. University Way, or the 'Ave', located next to the college has had a long declining history because of concerns like this-- random crime, aggressive panhandling, drunken frat boys, etc-- that have contributed to many businesses quietly folding and leaving. Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels is a big proponent of this "modern urbanism" model, so a couple of years ago he came up a big plan: WIDEN THE SIDEWALKS. This would somehow increase the sense of "community". They spent a few million and incovenienced lots of people doing construction. Just the other day Nickels gave a speech declaring that the area had been "re-energized". Basically, NOTHING HAS CHANGED. You've got the same graffiti-strewn walls, Ave Rats and panhandlers. The same business offices are empty (including the one with the big poster made for the project, declaring how the Ave is so "diverse" and "progressive").

It's hard to socially engineer a sense of community.

fyodor|2.10.05 @ 6:10PM|#

(And you know I'm just playin' with ya', joe.)

Oh, don't let him off the hook like that, lowdog! :-) Actually, whether your description is for real or not, it's a grand illustration of how allowing people to make their own choices maximizes...good stuff!

|2.10.05 @ 6:13PM|#

lurker,

I couldn't agree more. I grew up around the "Ave" and have seen it decline. As the mayor found out, calling it "fixed" doesn't do much to fix it.

And yet, engineering community seems to be the only "fix" that they can come up with. Perhaps leaving us alone to figure our own nieghborhoods out...but that would make too much sense.

|2.10.05 @ 6:44PM|#

fyodor - I really have lost weight since I got a car...I was just being playful about calling out urban planners to think about my situation, although not completely uncaring about their response...

fyodor|2.10.05 @ 7:22PM|#

fyodor - I really have lost weight since I got a car...

Wow. Good going......car! :-)

|2.10.05 @ 7:40PM|#

<offtopic>
lowdog,

I hate you :-) I've put on 15 lbs. since I got my truck 5 years ago and started driving instead of riding my bike to work. My coworkers appreciate it more, though, as I'm not as stinky.
</offtopic>

|2.10.05 @ 7:43PM|#

I, too, hail from the Emerald City. And I can attest to the ridiculous level of patchouli-scented social engineering surrounding "the Ave." It wasn't a problem that couldn't have been cured by the regular application of a few high-pressure water hoses, IMO. Blast the little f*ckers up the road to Ravenna Park on the business end of a hose, I say, so that even if they continue to be worthless little punks, at least they won't be killing businesses on University Way. But now you know why no one will ever elect me mayor of anything. I'd campaign on a platform of making tasers available in a keychain size, in decorator colors like cellphone covers.

No, seriously, at one point a suggestion was floated to pipe loud classical music onto the Ave to discourage the li'l punks from settling down long enough to stink up the street with their urine and Gad knows what else. But that was determined to be "anti-social" by some or other whiny closet dyke who's hopelessly trapped in academia. Meanwhile, businesses that had been on the Ave for decades (Porter-Jensen Jewelers comes to mind) grew tired of clearing the punks and filth off their doorsteps and windows, and closed.

Queen Anne, the hypocrisy capital of Puget Sound! Where Gap and J. Crew yuppies clamor for green spaces so the neighborhood will look more like it did back in their childhoods in the 1970s, before they all started breeding like rabbits. The unfortunate irony being, of course, that since they all have gym memberships, their sneakers never touch any terrain less stable than the floor mats of their "compact" SUVs. If you're in need of a really good laugh, nothing beats watching a pair of Queen Anne elites in organic cotton clothes and organic fruit hair products and moisturizers and recycled rubber-sole shoes drinking Fair Trade soy espressos out of paper cups, shortly before hopping back into their Ford Excursion. "Everybody needs to learn to consume less. Except us!"

I don't have anything against New Urbanism; as long as they're willing to fund their own neighborhoods through their own developers, and not rigidly impose their theories on public land use and planning agencies. In the British example, unfortunately, that's exactly what it sounded like they were doing. The soundness of urban planning theories is best tested not by force, but by market preference. People like privacy, and for fook's sake, liking privacy doesn't make them sociopaths!

I recently lost weight in my car, too. I took a couple of boxes out of the trunk. 30 lbs, right there, and I didn't even have to give up carbs.

|2.10.05 @ 8:28PM|#

The British example given in the article says more about that town's inability to control its youth than it does about the "evils of planning".

|2.10.05 @ 9:48PM|#

Lots of good comments, which I'm still looking at. My main point:

Please, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater: some `new urbanists' ideas are no doubt bad, and their proponents too eager to give them the force of law. But many of them have thought deeply about what makes a nice place to live, and it is surely more than `defensibility'.

People expect too much from design, both in the way of affording protection from crime, and in giving meaning to a life. If you live among thugs, you live among thugs. If you move frequently, have no family nearby, don't know your neighbors, and have no real connection to the town where you live, then having a short walk to the library and the Starbucks is not going to make your life wonderful. This is not a problem of physical design.

Lastly, the correlational data submitted as evidence of causal links between various n.u.features and crime are suspect for the usual statistical reasons.

|2.10.05 @ 10:31PM|#

"But many of them have thought deeply about what makes a nice place to live, and it is surely more than `defensibility'."

Sean,

It does have to be more than defensiblity, but that's where it has to start. If people keep throw trash in your yard, pretty soon you just stop cleaning it up. That starts the whole area going down hill (an exageration, but you see the point).

Whereas, if you can put up a fence (for example) so that people are less likely to mess with your area, you're more likely to improve it to your liking.

|2.10.05 @ 10:38PM|#

Hey zeroentitlement:

Great post, even though I have been known to dab a little patchouli on occasionally. But you need to come out of your shell more. Don't sugarcoat it, what do you REALLY think? ;)

To be honest, compared to a lot of areas I kind of like the Ave. But I accept that when you go there you're going to have to put up with a lot of stuff and look out for yourself. This is part of the acceptance that there are 'bad parts of town', and they have their role. Sometimes that's just what you're looking for. I don't believe that you can-- or necessarily should-- throw gov't money at something and think that by widening sidewalks or some crap that you're going to suddenly have a warm and fuzzy urban utopia. The Ave is going to stumble along just as always, kept going by things like the noodle joints and smoke shops, small businesses run by ethnic owners using their extended families as cheap labor. Kudos to them. The American Dream in action. Whatever the mayor's plan-of-the-month you're not going to be getting Bon Macy's in, nor getting many elderly women from Belleveue coming down to shop.

(Although, to be fair, I've noticed one addition since the sidewalks: there's now a Starbucks, located right across the street from Espresso Roma! Of course, that pisses off a lot of the non-globalization, free trade activists....)

|2.10.05 @ 11:00PM|#

Russ D, I have no doubt you've seen failures. I've seen those same techniques fail, too. I've also seem them work, and other techniques work.

WS Dave, it sounds like there are too many tiny parks scattered within the streets of a residential neighborhood, and maybe the city would be better off selling off some of them as house lots, and expanding a couple of strategic ones. Parks aren't supposed to be yards that the kids play in; they're supposed to be parks, that you take a walk to. I bet the Parks Dept is running ragged. Anyway, it sucks the way certain neighborhoods got hosed, and it sucks how geographically segregated capital is.

One problem with the article, it completely neglected any discussion of socio-economic class or population features and changes, and that's really key to understanding what's going on when you talk about housing and crime issues associated with a particular location.

|2.10.05 @ 11:15PM|#

OK, I am willing to admit that, *in this case*, adding the pedestrian access - if it was against the residents' wishes - was a bad thing. BUT that does not in and of itself make the concept of improving access for everybody - in the right places - a bad thing. Not everyone wants to live on a suburban cul-de-sac. Those of us who prefer life in traditional cities make the trade-off of living in a area with higher crime in order to enjoy the benefits of easier access to a wider variety of people and places. Finally, I believe something is wrong with a society in which providing simple pedestrian access, to people who otherwise have to depend on others to get around, has to result in an increase in crime. There are clearly other issues that need to be addressed.

|2.10.05 @ 11:25PM|#

fyodor, given what you've described, it would be perfectly rational for you to make that choice. My point was never to suggest that such a choice was irrational for an individual, but that the shape of the housing market, and the morphology of residential development has been such that there are incentives that make it rational for you make that choice. Further, that the structure of incentives and disincentives has been distorted, so that the deck is stacked, and in a way that raises certain problems.

One of these problems is an overall increase in crime, as older neighborhoods, where the neighborhood business districts were located, were systematically disinvested, suffered from white flight, or otherwise went down the tubes. Having communities that are going, or have gone, down the tubes is bad for your crime rate. Thus, it's easy to demonstrate how much more crime there is in areas where there are mixed uses, vs. areas of strictly segregates uses. Of course, this is all subject to individual variation among neighborhoods.

While the superficial explanation for all of this - blaming the problems of these neighborhoods on the presence of features that were common to older neighborhoods, such as neighborhood business districts - has its appeal for arguing certain positions, it isn't very effective in explaining either why those areas went bad, in choosing safe area over an unsafe one, nor in understanding how to build neighbohoods that promote security.

|2.10.05 @ 11:38PM|#

lurker,

"Do you really think that this would happen in one of the "new urban" areas?"

I think it would be very likely to happen in a New Urbanist neighborhood. Their layout tends to promote familiarity. You run into people walking down the street, say high from the porch, see the same faces. You seem to be lumping several different building styles into the categoy "new urbanist neighborhood." Most of the developments built using this model devote most of their land area to quiet back streets with houses that have their own yards and parking. People in traditional or neo-trad neighborhoods are more familiar with the people around them than in sprawlly subdivisions. (A gross generalization, with huge variation amond individuals and neighborhoods). Only a fraction of such a development would be apartments/condos over storefronts, or apartment buildings mixed in with office and retail.

As for the downtowns of major cities becoming unsafe at night, the shift of investment out of the areas that have walkable districs and public spaces, and the concentration of construction capital into projects that don't have these features, lead to the central cities to be overwhelmed, past a certain tipping point, with the problems of society. The point, to me, of your description is the that homeless people and possible security threats are present in sufficient numbers to define the character of the place. That sucks, and the screwed up way your metro area (and the rest of the country) has been built makes that problem worse.

|2.10.05 @ 11:40PM|#

Widening sidewalks has it purposes, but it's probably not going to lower the crime rate.

|2.10.05 @ 11:54PM|#

Properly defensible neighborhoods actually promote social interaction, and traditional neighborhoods are more sociable precisely because of the more adept handling of defensibility issues in the design of neighborhoods in the colonial, victorian, and early 20th century eras. The front porch, for example, allows me to stand somewhere and greet a visitor that is neither my driveway nor my living room.

Post-war sprawl suburbs, on the other hand, just brute forces the issue, using lots and lots of land to make the home uber-defensible. All you hear about is the "privacy" of the lot. This guarantees that you will not casually run across your neighbors, and makes dropping by both more difficult, and more socially dicey, as you have to go all the way up the driveway, invading space that is sort of defined as private space - including very often not offering a convenient path to the front door. Overall, it discourages you from living in and among the people around you.

|2.10.05 @ 11:58PM|#

It is endemic to politicians to equate more expensive businesses with more successful neighborhoods. I don't know this Ave are, but whether it flourishes or declines will absolutely not depend on whether it attracts pricey outlets. That's an effect of success, not a cause.

|2.10.05 @ 11:59PM|#

Rhywun, "Those of us who prefer life in traditional cities make the trade-off of living in a area with higher crime in order to enjoy the benefits of easier access to a wider variety of people and places." You shouldn't have to make that tradeoff. The fact that do is not the consequence of your neighborhood's layout and landn uses.

|2.11.05 @ 1:27AM|#

Seems like it would be very hard to separate the design factors that contribute to crime from the neighborhood demographics in the examples that are given. Living in San Francisco i find that the difference between crime infested areas and safe ones here has more to do with income than anything else. Almost all of the neighborhoods here have some level of mixed use development, narrow streets, houses that are close together, tiny yards, and numerous neighborhood parks.

The 1930s/40s streetcar semisuburb that I live in sounds a lot like the New Urbanist concept. We have mixed res/bus streets separated by several blocks of residential only, all layed out in a grid pattern. There is little crime in this part of town probably due to the fact that it is made up mostly of upper income asian families and single 20 something professionals.

|2.11.05 @ 8:57AM|#

"I just cannot believe the consistency of the errors these authors make."

joe, I'll bite, (being personally interested in concepts of urban planning) but state specifics about their errors please, and provide hard backing for your points.

"New Urbanism does not often include "large public areas" in neighbohoods."

So where do they go wrong with this? Do you have any examples? Is your model better? Is it proven?
Make your case.

"Second, every New Urbanist community . . . " I don't understand your assertion that their point is in eror.

"Third, empty nesters . . ." Where are they in error again?

|2.11.05 @ 12:37PM|#

I don't know much about the planning discipline but I DO know that they all encourage mixed housing neighborhoods. That is, put in apartments with residential homes. I know for a fact that putting an apartment building near a residential neighborhood increases the crime tremendously for the single-family dwellers. But, hey, you know it's the RIGHT THING TO DO. After all, those poor people work in the Wal-Mart and it's unfair to ask them to drive long distances to work. In my town, it has led to an increased resistance to City Council approving any more apartments. But Urban Planners don't let reality get in their way.

And by the way, I believe the story that a path can cause that much increase in crime. The low riders are always cruising, looking to score.

|2.11.05 @ 2:04PM|#

Jack, you know what produces even MORE crime than putting some of the cheap rental housing in mainly single family neighborhoods? Putting all of the cheap rental housing together. Oh but wait, your post wasn't about what increased or decreased crime; it was about what increased or decreased crime for single family homeowners, ie, your sort of people.

Voiceover, buy "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" by Jane Jacobs. She answers your first question, about appropriate siting and sizing of parks. To your second question, the authors set up a straw man binary choice between New Urbanist streets that have mixed uses and no private yards, and sprawl subdivisions that have quiet streets, no businesses, and private yards. My point is that this is nonsense, since quiet residential streets with private yards is actually the most common, by land area, development pattern in New Urbanist developments. They contain other building styles as well (unlike sprawl subdivisions), but they are not the exclusive mixed use, downtown density projects the authors set up. Third, Voiceover, the authors seriously misstate the market for New Urbanist homes, partly by pretending that condos above stores on busy streets is the only housing choice available, and partly by making a false assertion about who buys/rents those upper story lofts.

The authors have some good points to add to the discussion about design and security, but their determination to generalize their observations into an anti-New Urbanist manifesto leads them to make factual errors, and incorrectly categorize the provenance of various urban design elements.

|2.11.05 @ 2:04PM|#

A system of one way streets that prevent commuters on the main drag from turning down the side streets works very well. - joe

Like hell, it does. Where I live, in an older part of a Midwestern city, we have some one-way arterials that carry traffic from downtown to the city limits, and actually prevent the stop-and-go driving that is a regular city annoyance, as well as a pollution source. An idling vehicle spews infinitely more pollution per mile driven than one that is actually moving, and the 10% that causes 90% of air pollution really pour it out when waiting for the light to change. But we also have alleys, which means that when a driver can't turn into a side street because his destination is on the wrong side of a One Way, he's likely to pull into the previous block, then cut through via the alley. I regularly see drivers - especially the ones from the popular pizza joint on the street east of me - use the alleys as avenues, crossing two or three side streets until they pull onto an actual street. Pedestrians are also fond of walking through the parking areas behind the commercial buildings on the arterial, and cutting through any backyard that isn't fenced in, to get to the next block. I might mention the several college-age types I have shooed off my landlord's property while they used the walkway between his building and its neighbor, some of whom are just saving steps. Others I have caught preparing to urinate on the bushes. If the city and county would reduce the tax levy, maybe the poor guy could afford to fence in the back yard completely, but then the tiny parking space the building has might further shrink.

If there were any justice, the trespassers-on-foot would get mowed down by the guys driving pizza in their beater cars, who roll the stops as they cross sidewalks and never signal. :)

Alleys, when they are open on both ends, also provide a stealthy route for a certain kind of driver. He may be unlicensed, uninsured, driving while suspended, or without registration. He may be driving a stolen car, usually in "joyride" mode. He may have had a few too many, and eager to avoid police. Crawling along at a speed less than normal for the regular road, though often too fast for the alley, these guys may just be trying to dodge the cops or looking for criminal opportunities. They needn't either break into or enter apartments or houses, if they suspect that garages holds treasure, such as tools that can be fenced or hocked. Anybody live in an area that got snowed-in recently, where a hot snowblower might have changed hands, no questions asked?

Even if they aren't up to no good, these clowns have a disproportionate amount of bad exhaust systems. My landlord has trouble keeping the apartments that face the alley rented, because the noise can be worse than on the street side.

Alleys. Bah!

Kevin

|2.12.05 @ 2:31PM|#

I meant a system where the side streets were one way, so you either couldn't turn onto them from the main street, or so you couldn't actually cut through the neighborhood one them withough coming out behind where you started. Somerville and Cambridge, Massachusetts, have raised this to an art.

I didn't mean making the arterials one way.