I’ve recently been talking a lot with David Gouverneur, who I work for, about how to control slum development in South America. The most important thing he said was that cities need to create armatures to encourage growth along certain paths and in certain ways, and use other armatures as barriers to growth. It is the same thing with growth in suburban North America. We have to create armatures that encourage walking (wide and comfortable sidewalks, lively storefronts) and discourage driving (maximum parking requirements, shifting parking lots to the back of the lot).

From http://www.big.dk/projects/kim/.

My friend Any Wang, formerly of Curbed San Francisco, pointed me towards this new building in Park City, Utah, by Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG). I thought it was particularly interesting because I have been on this corner and had thought that it was really the only significant gap in the otherwise wonderful urban fabric of Park City.

The Kimball Art Center, Park City, Utah. From http://maps.google.com.

I’m glad, first of all, that they decided to fill this underutilized public space with a building, and second of all, that its a building I think I’m going to like. I should say that I sort of wonder why I like Bjarke Ingels as an architect. A lot of his stuff is the sort of pointy architecture that looks like it wants to hurt you, a la Daniel Libeskind, who I really dislike, or is generally the sort of look-at-me starchitecture you see all over the place. That being said, Ingels stuff has a tectonic quality that I find really interesting, as is especially evident at the Mountain, probably Ingels’ most well-known project.

The Mountain, by BIG. From http://www.big.dk/projects/mtn/.

This works even better when Ingels mixes his designs with natural materials such as brick or wood. One of my favorite buildings is his Maritime Youth House, which is a series of wooden hills on the edge of the sea.

The Maritime Youth House, by BIG. From http://www.big.dk/projects/mar/.

Ingels is also a master of turning architecture into large-scale geometry, which appeals to my mathematical mind. There are many examples of this, but probably best was the Danish pavilion at Shanghai Expo 2010, where he convinced the Danish government to let him borrow the Little Mermaid statue from Copenhagen Harbor.

Expo 2010 Danish Pavilion, by BIG. From http://www.big.dk/projects/xpo/.

This tectonic nature, use of natural materials, and large-scale geometry are all present in the Kimball Art Center, and I really enjoy it. In addition, it actual is quite a good urban design. The base parallels Main Street, continuing the streetwall and presenting its lower gallery on the perpendicular Heber Avenue frontage.

View along Main Street. From http://www.big.dk/projects/kim/.

Meanwhile, the rotated top floor gallery terminates the vista of the east section of Heber Avenue, which hits Main Street at an angle.

The view from Heber Avenue, showing both the lower and upper galleries. From http://www.big.dk/projects/kim/.

The interlocking timbers that make up the facade are both an echo of the traditional wooden cabin construction native to the area, as well as the mining history of Park City. The building, in fact, is essentially the same height as the Silver King Coalition Mine Building that previously occupied this site until it burned down in 1982. Ingels nods to history while lending a contemporary adaptation.

The building isn’t perfect. The Main Street frontage leaves a lot to be desired. On the side farther from the building, one can enjoy the larger move of the large-scale geometry and the windows of the upper gallery, but on the side closest to the building, one would only see a blank wooden wall. The building lacks the scale of architecture elements advocated by Nikos Salingaros. I also worry about flat roofs in areas that have heavy snowfall such as this. There seems to be a structurally sound core to the building that will hold it up, but I do wonder if in twenty years the roof will begin to leak.

Bjarke Ingels’ Kimball Art Center in Park City, Utah, fills a major hole in the urban fabric, respects the history of the city and site, and uses a tectonic feeling, natural materials and large-scale geometry to create a very appealing solution to this site. His architecture is fun without being immature, and I hope he ends up doing more work stateside.

Hi Holly,

A friend sent this info to me, and I was wondering if Dave sees evidence of this in his city planning work…

http://www.postsustainabilityinstitute.org/what-is-communitarianism.html

Love to you both,

Aunt Hope

Holly forwarded this to me and I indeed took a look at it. I really enjoyed reading it, and outlined in detail what was accurate and what wasn’t about the website. Aunt Hope was kind enough to let me reproduce the letter on my blog. Here it is:

Aunt Hope,

Thanks for sending Holly this Post Sustainability Institute thing. I’ve enjoyed reading it. Some of the things in here are spot on; most of them are totally off base. Long story short, the UN is an essentially powerless body and can’t force us to do any of this (and isn’t trying to), but if you don’t mind, I’d like to go through it point by point and discuss it.

Economic collapse creates a chain of events, but on a micro level (county, city) there is a marked reduction in revenue for maintenance of services. Loss of services to outlying areas means, for example, roads not being maintained to rural and suburban areas. Roads not being maintained to those areas, schools not being supported in those areas, law enforcement/fire/social services not being supported in those areas means a gradual movement into the denser city centers.

This has happened in some degree. The main ways cities generate revenue are through property taxes and intergovernmental grants, i.e. from higher levels of government, both state and federal. As the value of people’s property has declined and as state and federal governments have become more stingy, many cities are having trouble paying for their services. Some cities have even filed for bankruptcy. Other cities (the only examples I’m familiar with are in Michigan) have set up programs where they will cut off services to outlying areas, de-annex areas from the city, or demolish abandoned properties and sell them to neighbors for low prices so that they don’t have to provide services to as many homes. So far, however, this has been fairly rare.

Smart Growth/New Urbanism in Redevelopment Areas is the supposed answer: smaller units, attached condos, little or no parking, few private cars.  More eyes on the street.

It’s certainly an answer, and one that many planners, myself included, generally support. This guy doesn’t really define what they are, though. New Urbanism is a movement, principally led by the private sector, to create towns and neighborhoods based on traditional development principles. New Urbanist developments often attempt to look a lot like the small, 350-year-old town I grew up in in Massachusetts. Smart Growth is somewhat of a public policy counterpart, which has more of a focus on developing zoning codes and other regulations that are friendly to the sort of traditional building found in New Urbanist developments, which are often hard to develop because of current suburban zoning codes.

Redevelopment projects are the implementation arm of the UN plan, and include rezoning of huge sections of your cities to Smart Growth zones.

The UN has no power to force countries to comply with its resolutions, even if it had made one about New Urbanism/Smart Growth, which it hasn’t.

This physical manifestation of UN Agenda 21 is social engineering paid for with your property tax dollars. These areas then have their property taxes diverted away from your services and into the pockets of a few developers and bond brokers for 30-45 years.

Cities don’t just give money to developers. In fact, all cities require developers to at least pay application fees to develop in a city. Many also make them pay impact fees, which go towards the costs of maintaining roads or expanding schools that will be impacted by the new development. Some cities may assist large developers by assembling land or maybe waiving some fees, but only if the city’s Economic Development division thinks that doing so will bring in enough revenue and/or jobs to offset the waiver.

Water well monitoring and loss of water rights reduce the opportunity for living outside of cities.

I’ll be honest and say I don’t know a lot about this. Water rights aren’t a huge deal in the East because it rains enough that we rarely have water shortages.

Wildlands programs that prohibit roads and trails into rural areas while supposedly protecting them with conservation easements increase the loss of our food source independence.  The sale of development rights to Agricultural Land Trusts that restrict farmers and ranchers from using their lands and therefore make it impossible to farm for more than one more generation endanger our ability to feed ourselves.

America has never had a problem with “food source independence,” and I really doubt that it ever will. Agricultural land trusts don’t restrict farmers and ranchers from using their lands, they require it. Selling development rights means that you can’t sell your farm to a developer and that it will always be a farm.

Add to this the pressure from ICLEI Climate Protection Campaigns to reduce our energy usage to pre-1985 levels, and increased regulations on industry and you have the perfect storm for loss of jobs and greater dependence on other countries for goods.

First of all, the United States doesn’t participate in ICLEI, the Kyoto protocol or any of these other energy reduction programs. Even if it did, it isn’t believed that it would lead to a net loss of jobs; people who currently work in refineries would find jobs in solar panel plants. And as far as dependence on foreign countries for goods, reducing our energy consumption would make us more self-reliant, since we are the world’s largest importer of oil.

As the population becomes more and more urbanized and less able to provide food or necessary products, more people are dependent on the government for housing, food, and other basic necessities.

People have lived in cities for millennia and not relied on the government to provide these things. Cities are tied to their rural hinterlands and are still able to get food from them, and even within cities you get vegetable gardens and other small-scale forms of agriculture. Urban agriculture is actually a growing movement. And the best way to provide housing for people is not to have the government provide it, but to remove suburban-style density restrictions and let people build more densely so that there are enough housing units to drive the prices down so that the government doesn’t have to subsidize them.

As a major leveler, the loss of money, land, food, and energy independence brings the US into ‘social equity’ with the poorer countries.

That’s not what “social equity” means. From Wikipedia:
Social [equity] is a social state of affairs in which all people within a specific society or isolated group have the same status in a certain respect. At the very least, social [equity] includes equal rights under the law, such as security, voting rights, freedom of speech and assembly, the extent of property rights, and equal access to social goods and services. However, it also includes concepts of economic equity, i.e. access to education, health care and other social securities. It also includes equal opportunities and obligations, and so involves the whole of society.

Community Oriented Policing will encourage, if not require, people to watch their neighbors and report suspicious activity.  More activity will be identified as ‘crime’–such as obesity, smoking, drinking when you have a drinking problem, name calling, leaving lights on, neglect (in someone’s perception) of children, elderly, and pets, driving when you could ride a bike, breaking a curfew, and failure to do mandatory volunteering.

The UN would be powerless to do this, as well as planners, who have no police power. The only organization with the police power to do such a thing would be the government itself, and it is doubtful that, in a democracy, a state like this could arise. The “Chinese and Russian models” are both dictatorships, and unless such a government is established in America, a police state like that he describes is unlikely. As a planner, the only one I even care about is driving when you could ride a bike, and I can’t give someone a ticket for that, I’ll just make the cartway narrower and add a bike lane so that they have the choice to bike and the cars are encouraged to move at a safer speed. Also, no one in planning uses the word “communitarianism.” We’re appointed officials or hired consultants, not the government. We are powerless advisers to elected officials. If someone is worried about “communitarianism,” they should call their city councilperson, not blame the planner.

Communitarianism is the ‘balancing’ or subsuming of individual rights below the needs of the ‘community.’  The community is defined now as the global village.  So anything identified as serving the global village takes precedence over the rights of the individual.

Even if this were accurate, again, there just isn’t an enforcement mechanism. It can’t happen. Basically, this isn’t something you need to worry about. I hope that helps answer your question, although I could probably afford to be more brief. I really want to thank you for bringing it to my attention, though. Would you mind if I mention it in my blog?

Sincerely,
Dave

I again thank Aunt Hope for bringing this to my attention and again want to reiterate that this is nothing to worry about. New Urbanism and Smart Growth aren’t about controlling your life; they are about providing opportunities for a better one.

The urban transect. From thinkorthwim.com.

Some headway has been made with the New Urbanist transect, which introduces the suburbs as a distinctly non-rural and yet non-urban place, and introduces the idea of an urban gradient. However, this does not address the different types of settlements based on size and amount of services. What I propose is more of a matrix, where the rural to urban gradient will cross with a gradient from small settlements with few services to megalopoli. I will illustrate this matrix with examples from areas that I am familiar with.

The Rural to Urban Gradient

Rural Settlements

Rural areas are characterized by an extremely low density of both populations and buildings. Homes are almost exclusively single family on parcels made up of multiple acres, with parcels in the hundreds of acres or more not being uncommon. Industries in these areas are primarily focused on extraction, whether they be agriculture, mining, energy, etc. People in these areas tend to be more self sufficient. They may grow their own food, or they may buy in bulk and store it for longer, since it is a long trip into town for supplies. People generally work close to home, however they would require some sort of transportation other than walking to make trips into town, whether to purchase supplies or to take resources into market. Very few services are offered in these areas. While a store might locate itself at a strategic intersection, most rural residents have to go into a larger settlement for services.

Suburban Settlements

Suburbs tend to be higher density than rural areas, but are still fairly low, with the single family house on .25-5 acre lots being the dominant housing type. However, with more of these houses closer together, the populations in suburbs begin to be higher than in rural areas. One of the defining features of suburban areas is the extreme separation of uses. Work places, shopping and entertainment places, and homes are all strictly segregated, often making public transit or walking infeasible and requiring the use of a car for transportation. Another common characteristic of suburban areas is that they rarely are self-sufficient as far as workplaces. Most workers in suburban areas commute to more dominant areas, whether they be suburban office parks or edge cities, or more traditional urban areas. All in all, suburbs are rarely self sufficient, and must exist in a dynamic relationship with other development types.

Urban Settlements

Urban settlements have much higher population densities than their rural or suburban counterparts, and in many of them multifamily and attached units outnumber single family detached houses. Instead of being separated, compatible uses are mixed, with apartments and offices over retail and stores integrated in working areas. This higher density and mix of uses makes public transit feasible, as well as making it reasonable to walk to destinations rather than driving. Although there is of course some reverse commuting, most urban residents work in the municipality they live in, and unless there is a lack of affordable housing near work spaces, they should be able to live and work in the same neighborhood. Many from surrounding suburbs commute into the urban area for work. Urban areas, of course, are dependent on their rural hinterlands and on each other for materials, but the manufacture of goods and provision of services happens within the city, making it more self sufficient than the suburb.

The Small to Large Gradient

There is a problem with referring to all settlement types as “cities.” Cities are large, generally urban places, although many demonstrate some suburban characteristics. Small settlements made up mostly of residences are not cities. In the English tradition, there has been a gradient of human settlements. Hamlets, villages, and towns all describe these smaller settlements. There is not, however, a similar gradient of types once we reach the “city” level, and here are just referred to by their size. In contemporary society, we have come to see larger settlement types made up of multiple, smaller settlements: the metropolis, with one major, influential city and its suburbs and hinterland; and the megalopolis, a collection of major metropoli that grow into each other. I have collected examples of each of these types and explain how they could be either rural, suburban, or urban. There are probably better examples out there, and I would invite anyone to submit their examples in the comments section, but I can only comment on those areas I am most familiar with.

Hamlet

A hamlet is a very small community which may be simply a cluster of houses. It is overwhelmingly if not entirely residential, but can have a few services, such as a general store or service station, or maybe a school or post office. Homes are virtually all single family. These settlements may be somewhat informal and unimproved, rarely with curbs and gutters if the streets ave even paved. Hamlets are generally on the more rural side of the gradient, and as such, I couldn’t think of an example of an urban hamlet. If you can, please leave a comment.

A Rural Hamlet: King Hill, Idaho

From maps.google.com.

King Hill is a hamlet that sits on the north bank of the Snake River near the eastern border of Elmore County, Idaho. Some people work in the fairly close village of Glenns Ferry or other communities, but most either work from home or on the surrounding farms. The community boasts a post office, a church, and not much else. The roads don’t have curbs, and landscaping is generally informal.

A Suburban Hamlet: Leeds, Massachusetts

From maps.google.com.

Leeds shares some similarities to King Hill. It is small, virtually all single family, and has few services (a church, a school, and a general store). However, Leeds has shrunk somewhat, since it used to be a mill village. The mill buildings still exist, but they sit vacant, and virtually everyone in the hamlet works in nearby Northampton or other surrounding municipalities. This commute pattern and closer relation to other municipalities makes Leeds more suburban than the rural King Hill.

Village

Villages are distinguished from hamlets from a generally greater intensity of development. There is more variety in housing types, which may just be a greater variety of single family lot sizes, but may include townhomes or some apartments. More services are provided, such as restaurants or a small grocery, but most services beyond someone’s daily needs must be found somewhere else. Development may become slightly more formalized, possibly with a commercial main street, formalized tree plantings or park space, and fully improved streets. While villages may exist in rural, suburban or urban locations, the characteristics of a village are similar to those of a neighborhood, which forms a small, defined section of a larger municipality.

A Rural Village: Nyssa, Oregon

From maps.google.com.

As you can already see, Nyssa is significantly larger and more complex than the previously mentioned hamlets. Nyssa was founded as a company town on the Oregon side of the Snake River. It has been slowly losing population since I-84 was routed through the town of Ontario to the north, and so Nyssa in some ways has too many services for its population of just under 4,000. There are a number of churches, two formal parks, a school, and commercial uses along Thunderegg Boulevard and Main Street, and industrial uses fronting the railroad tracks. Although many locals work in these industries or other local services, many still work in the sugar beet and potato farms that surround the village. Nyssa’s Main Street is fairly well designed, but the declining population has taken its toll, and many storefronts are empty. While Nyssa does have its own grocery, a handful of restaurants, a tractor supply store, and other services, many residents travel to nearby Ontario for shopping.

A Suburban Village: Salem, Utah

From maps.google.com.

Salem shares many characteristics with Nyssa. They have similar populations (Salem is just over 5,000). Salem also has a grocery store, restaurants, service stations, and other services. It has less industry, but it does have some. It has some formal green space, especially around Salem Pond. The biggest difference is that while Nyssa is fairly self sufficient as far as jobs, most people in Salem commute to either the nearby town of Spanish Fork or farther north to the city of Provo. Salem also has had more growth in the last few decades where they have abandoned the traditional Mormon grid pattern and have created leapfrog, suburban-style developments. If Salem is able to implement the General Plan that I worked on for them with Long Pine Consulting, they will eventually become more of a town with distinct neighborhoods, but that will take a long time to be fully realized.

An Urban Village: Beaver, Pennsylvania

From maps.google.com.

Part of what makes Beaver urban is its context. Rather than being among fields, it is among other villages, including Rochester, Bridgewater, Monaca, and Vanport. Another is its highly formal nature, which can partially be attributed to its designation as a county seat.

From wikipedia.org

Beaver has a very formal green featuring war memorials and a lovely main street (3rd Street) with a grocery, restaurants, a world-class bakery, and other services. The dense blocks and small streets make it extremely walkable. Most people who live in Beaver also work there, with people from nearby villages commuting in as well. In addition to county facilities, there are a few schools and many beautiful churches.

A Neighborhood Village: East Falls, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

From maps.google.com.

East Falls, if anything, pushes the upper population bound of what can be called a village, at just over 10,000 people, but its organization and service structure is definitely that of a village. East Falls is a well-defined area bounded by Roosevelt Boulevard on the southeast, the Schuylkill River on the Southwest, the Wissahickon Creek on the northwest and Wissahickon Avenue on the northeast. The high population is concentrated closer to the river and Ridge Avenue, but quickly disperses as you head uphill, away from the river, into large lot, single family homes. This transition can be seen with a few images of the path along Midvale Avenue.

The giant pepper at Midvale Avenue and Ridge Avenue. From maps.google.com.

Further up Midvale Avenue, at the townhouses that my mom said she wants to retire in. From maps.google.com.

Single family houses on top of the hill. From maps.google.com.

Commercial uses are concentrated in a mixed use corridor along Ridge Avenue, with churches, schools and other uses spread out throughout the community. East Falls does not have a lot of employment uses and most residents work elsewhere in Philadelphia, but the higher density allows for both buses and heavy rail to be feasible options for transportation.

Town

Towns are the next step up in development intensity. Towns contain all major housing types, including apartments, townhouses, and single family homes. All of a person’s regular needs can be found in a town, including food, government services, repair shops, and many others. In addition, more special or limited services are provided, such as clothing, entertainment, or others. Development becomes more sophisticated, where almost all streets are improved, and in some cases unified “branding” of the town may be employed. One of the defining characteristics of a town is that it is the smallest development type that can be made up of multiple neighborhoods, with varying degrees of independence or interdependence. Like villages, towns can be either rural, suburban (in fact, while suburban examples of hamlets and villages may be more “exurban,” many modern suburbs, including bedroom communities and edge cities, fit into this category), or urban, and can also be part of larger cities, as urban districts.

A Rural Town: Carson City, Nevada

From maps.google.com.

Carson City was originally a mining town of some importance and, as such, was made the state capitol of Nevada when it was granted statehood. Though the mines are no longer a significant part of Carson City’s economy, the fact that it is the state capitol has not only kept it from declining, but has allowed it to grow significantly, and the town now boasts a population of over 55,000. Many residents are government employees of one sort or another, including forest rangers and employees of the BLM. Some residents commute to Reno, but it is a long commute and occasionally the road closes due to snow, so most people who live in Carson City also work there. Though being a town of some size, it has little in the way of suburbs, mostly due to inhospitable building conditions, and much of the surrounding developable land is already a part of Carson City. Neighborhoods are clearly evident, if only by being able to differentiate the old gridded areas from the newer neighborhoods with dendritic street patterns. Services include all day to day uses, along with a few strip shopping centers and, as anywhere in Nevada, a few casinos.

The Nugget, which has a great breakfast, and Cactus Jack's casinos on the main drag of Carson City. From maps.google.com.

A Suburban Town: Rocklin, California

From maps.google.com.

Rocklin was little more than a train stop and a gravel pit before it got sucked into the suburban sprawl that extends northeastward from Sacramento. As such, it has very little traditional infrastructure to build off of, and is an archetypal American suburb.

Pacific Street, Rocklin's sad little main street: one-story buildings, vacant lots, lots of parking, and expensive branding and improvements that did little to reverse the downward trend. From maps.google.com.

Virtually all of Rocklin’s retail uses are car-dependent strip-style retail. The few office and industrial uses it has are also suburban-style, although most residents commute out of Rocklin, either to its powerhouse neighbor Roseville or to Sacramento. Although apartment housing exists, it is surrounded by parking and often by some sort of wall, cutting them off from surroundings and forcing people to drive. The overwhelming housing type is the single family home, and many of the houses are built on the exact same floor plan thanks to much of them being built at the same time in the massive Stanford Ranch subdivision. Although uses are strictly segregated, when I lived there I was able to walk a reasonable distance to school, to a grocery store and to a few restaurants. It was possible, but certainly wasn’t as enjoyable as a walk in Beaver, Carson City or many of the places to follow.

An Urban Town: Northampton, Massachusetts

From maps.google.com.

Northampton, at just shy of 30,000 people, is just over half the population of both Carson City and Rocklin, yet it feels much more urban. This 350-year-old town not only had good urban fabric, but preserved it even during the suburban era, and now stands as a model urban town.

Downtown Northampton on a beautiful fall day. From panoramio.com.

Although Northampton does have some strip retail, especially along north King Street, it is centered on a traditional mixed use downtown which provides a wide array of shopping opportunities, possibly even more than an equally urban town because of Northampton’s strong association with various counterculture movements. This, along with smaller lot sizes and a dense network of streets, makes Northampton extremely walkable. Although the population is not high enough to justify rail transit, the town does operate a bus system, along with the other towns and villages of Massachusetts’ Pioneer Valley. Northampton’s main economic driver is Smith College, which not only employs most residents of Northampton, but also brings in commuters from other nearby municipalities. Distinct neighborhoods can be identified throughout Northampton, from Smith College to Downtown to Bay State and other principally residential areas.

A District Town: University City, Philadelphia

From maps.google.com.

University City, bounded roughly by 52nd Street, Spring Garden Street, and the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia, covers a large area and a large population, although much of it is fairly transient. A large part of the population is made up of students who attend Drexel University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of the Sciences, which give the district its name. Although there are certainly a number of apartment complexes, University City is a part of Philadelphia, where the rowhouse has always been the dominant housing type. However, it is not unusual for those rowhouses to them be subdivided into various apartments.

Row houses near Clark Park in University City. From panoramio.com.

There are a number of mixed use corridors throughout the area, from Lancaster Avenue to the north, to the three main central streets of Market, Chestnut and Walnut, to Baltimore Avenue in the south. These are just the main corridors, and there are a number of smaller scale mixed use areas between them. SEPTA has buses, trolleys, subway, elevated rail and commuter rail in the area. University City, and particularly the Science Center along Market Street along with the universities, are also major workplaces, and more people commute to University City than to any other area in the Philadelphia metro area with the exception of Center City, Philadelphia. The area has distinct neighborhoods, including each of the universities, as well as Powelton Village, Cedar Park, Clark Park, and others.

City

A city is the next step up in the scale of size and development intensity. Cities are made up of various districts, with various neighborhoods within them. These neighborhoods vary in density and building type, allowing people to have a large variety of choices in where and how they want to live. Cities contain all sorts of services, with larger cities providing more unique, specialized and elite services. This is one of the major distinctions between large and small cities. We don’t really have a word to distinguish between large and small cities, but their size and access to services are very different, as will be discussed below. When you reach this scale of settlements, it is rare that cities exist in a rural environment. There may be a few examples (I was thinking of considering Lincoln, Nebraska, but couldn’t think of any other examples), and if you can think of any, please leave it in the comments section. However, there are many cities that follow a suburban pattern, as well as more urban cities.

A Small Suburban City: Provo, Utah

From maps.google.com.

Provo is a city of about 112,000 people about 50 miles south of Salt Lake City. It is home to Brigham Young University and the roughly 35,000 students who go there. As such, there are a lot of apartments in Provo, but is is still overwhelmingly single-family, and high parking requirements and low density limits keep the density fairly low, despite many apartments. Although Provo does have a small, mixed use center, the city is mostly made up of large, single-use districts, and even the center has been hollowed out and few apartments exist there, with mostly offices above the stores and little nightlife. While Provo’s single family housing and single use districts contribute to its suburban nature, it is capped off by its car dependence. Like many Mormon settlements, Provo has very wide roads, which in the automobile era make it unsafe and undesirable to cross them. In addition, Provo requires pedestrians to press a button to cross streets, and the crossing times are very short. Provo participates in the Utah Transit Authority and will soon have a heavy rail connection to Salt Lake, but the buses don’t have great coverage and run infrequently. A Bus Rapid Transit system, which would run from Provo’s new rail station to BYU to Utah Valley University and finally to the new rail station in Orem, has been proposed, but it is not likely to be approved due to funding constraints and the general conservative politics of the city. Provo has a number of districts, including the Bench, the campus area, the East Bay, and others, each with their own neighborhoods.

Provo's wide University Avenue and two of the tallest buildings in the city. From panoramio.com.

A Small Urban City: Allentown, Pennsylvania

From maps.google.com.

Compare the above picture of some of Provo’s tallest buildings with this picture of Allentown:

Center City Allentown. From wikipedia.org.

Dominated by the 332-foot PPL Building, Allentown’s downtown dwarfs Provo’s in both height and area. It has significant mixed use corridors running along both Hamilton Street and 7th Street, as well as a thriving area around 19th Street just north of the fairgrounds. Although Allentown looks like a bigger city than Provo, its population is only 118,000, barely larger. In fact, the land area of Allentown is only 18 square miles, compared to Provo’s 42, making it much denser. This density and mix of use make Allentown much more walkable. Allentown is also served by the Lehigh and Northampton Transit Authority, which has very dense coverage in Center City, although it does get much lighter in the outlying districts. It is the largest municipality in the Lehigh Valley, and as such is where most residents of the area work. It can be divided into a number of districts, including Center City, the Wards, and the West End.

A Medium Suburban City: Boise, Idaho

From maps.google.com.

Many people don’t realize how large Boise actually is. I know that when I went there as a missionary in 2005 I though I would be spending all my time milking cows and picking potatoes. Imagine my pleasant surprise when I entered the city and saw that this would be the area I would begin my missionary service in:

Downtown Boise. From wikipedia.org.

Boise’s population is well over 200,000, making it bigger than it’s “major city” neighbor, Salt Lake City. Its downtown is actually fairly dense, and has done a good job of preserving the good bones it was built on, unlike Provo. Although it doesn’t boast any major sports teams, it does have a huge sports entertainment industry based around Boise State University, as well as a few minor league sports teams. It also boasts the only dance club I’ve ever been to (after I was done being a missionary), one among many nightlife spots. Though it does offer urban services, and although the downtown is certainly a dense, walkable area, the city on the whole is much more suburban. Boise, like many western cities, grew immensely in the last century, partially do to an aggressive annexation policy that has added much low density, sparsely developed land to the city. The single family home is the dominant housing type. Outside of the downtown, uses are largely divided rather than mixed. The city is very car dependent with a weak bus system, and I can say from experience that riding a bike in many parts of the city involves taking your life into your hands. Boise is the largest city in Idaho and in the Treasure Valley and as such brings in many commuters. There are a number of distinct districts in the area owing to the topography as well as to man-made barriers such as I-184.

A Medium Urban City: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

From maps.google.com.

I wondered if some of my local Pittsburghers would be unhappy with me putting Pittsburgh in the medium city category. At one point it was one of the largest in the country and even today enjoys many big-city amenities. However, with a population barely over 300,000 and still in decline as of the last census, it is hard to put Pittsburgh in the same category as New York and Los Angeles. It is a very unique city. It has a number of very dense districts such as Downtown, the Strip and Oakland, while many of the outlying neighborhoods include small single family homes as well as small apartment complexes and attached units. Pittsburgh’s extreme topography allows for high density development in valleys and on flat hilltops while keeping steeper slopes in a natural condition, which makes it feel very green even in densely populated areas.

Pittsburgh's dense downtown as seen from the green slopes of Mount Washington. From wikipedia.org.

Pittsburgh enjoys a major sports entertainment industry, and is home to a number of growing industries, including banking, medical, and educational campuses. Many neighborhoods are walkable despite extreme elevation thanks to almost 45,000 steps which often run parallel to or in some instances replace sidewalks or even streets.

A Pittsburgh "paper street" (i.e. labeled as a street on paper, or on a map, but a stairwell in real life) connects two areas of extreme topography. From city-data.com.

Pittsburgh has an extensive bus system, and a light rail system currently serves the South Hills and is being expanded to the stadium area on the north of the Allegheny River. As can be seen from my last post, Pittsburgh is very much the center for commuters in the region.

A Large Suburban City: Los Angeles, California

From maps.google.com.

Los Angeles is America’s second largest city, at almost 4 million people. However, it’s not even in the top 100 cities in America for population density. Although downtown Los Angeles is a high density, mixed use area, and there are others to be found in the city, it is not the general character of this city. While there is a transit system, it is less than comprehensive. Los Angeles, at one time, had one of the most extensive streetcar networks in the world; but it was all torn out, and replaced by the transportation infrastructure that is most characteristic of Los Angeles: the freeway.

The Four Level (Bill Keene Memorial) Interchange. Los Angeles is the only place that I have noticed caring enough about their interchanges to name them. From wikipedia.org.

Los Angeles’ car dependency is well known, leading to its familiar smog and congestion, the worst in the country. 708,000 people commute into Los Angeles, but 695,000 commute out, making it almost commute-neutral. The city hosts many services, but first and foremost is the entertainment industry. Los Angeles has sports teams in most major sports, but much more important is the fact that most major film studios call LA home, especially in the Hollywood district.

A Large Urban City: New York City, New York

From maps.google.com.

It is interesting to me that New York City has just over 60% of the land area of Los Angeles, yet has over twice the population, at just over 8 million. And considering the extremely low densities of Staten Island and eastern Queens, this means an even greater concentration in the rest of the city. I didn’t think it would say much for me to include pictures of New York, because pretty much everyone knows what it looks like. I can just say Empire State Building, Times Square, Wall Street, and you’ve already got the image in your mind. And that’s only Manhattan; most people outside of the city have no idea what sort of interesting stuff can be found in the other boroughs. New York is the most densely populated major city in America, and while there are a few single family areas, it is overwhelmingly attached housing, especially apartments. New York’s neighborhoods are overwhelmingly mixed use and the most walkable in the country. Its train and bus system is nearly comprehensive. It is the center for stage and television entertainment. It is the world financial capitol. In fact, as the home of the United Nations, it is the closest thing we have to a world capitol. In many ways, New York defines what it means to be a city.

Metropolis

Much like a town can be considered a collection of neighborhoods/villages and a city a collection of districts/towns, a metropolis is a collection of cities. It generally has one major city at the center (although there are of course exceptions such as Minneapolis/St. Paul), where most people commute to and where major cultural or social institutions are based, surrounded by suburbs or smaller urban areas. Many services, such as local news and radio, are organized on a metropolitan scale. Metropolitan transportation systems, whether they be transit or automobile oriented, allow for people throughout the region to enjoy the services of the central city. In many metropoli, however, these suburbanites do not pay an equal share for the services they enjoy; they flee central cities to escape crime or dense living conditions, and as such don’t pay the taxes that the city needs to survive, leading to a downward spiral of decay at the center. Portland is the only city in America that has established a metropolitan government so that this burden can be more equally shared. Metropolitan areas, like cities, generally are more suburban or urban than rural.

A Suburban Metropolis: Salt Lake City, Utah

From maps.google.com.

Salt Lake City, as mentioned above, is a medium city at best, with a population of about 190,000. However, it is the principal city of the Wasatch Front, a developed area leading from above the Idaho border to central Utah. Much of this area is unbuildable because of steep terrain or bad soils, but the developed area features few areas of concentrated density; even downtown Salt Lake is not terribly dense. Many of the surrounding municipalities are suburban towns where most of the residents work either in Salt Lake City or in the lesser cities of Provo and Ogden. This area is really the heartland of the Mormon religion, and the church administration, as well as the iconic Salt Lake Temple, are both based here.

From front to back: the Salt Lake Tabernacle; the Salt Lake Temple; and the Church Administration Building, the tallest building in Salt Lake City. From wikipedia.org.

Although the Salt Lake City metropolitan area is currently very car dependent, it has been taking strides in a good direction; a light rail system, TRAX, serves the Salt Lake Valley, and a heavy rail system FrontRunner, has been built north to Ogden and is currently being expanded south to Provo and beyond.

An Urban Metropolis: Boston, Massachusetts

From maps.google.com.

Boston itself is a fairly large city, but it sits immediately across the Charles River from two smaller cities: Cambridge and Somerville. The cities of Quincy and Newton are on its other sides. This central amalgamation is encircled by a series of satellite cities and towns: Barnstable, New Bedford, Worcester, Lowell, Nashua, Manchester, Portland, and many others in between. Though some of these areas have developed in a more suburban pattern, many of them are old cities with good bones, and are denser and more mixed use than their counterparts in Salt Lake City. Despite the Mass Pike, Route 128 and other highways in the area, the Boston metro area is still quite transit-friendly, with an extensive heavy rail network connecting many of these satellite cities to the center.

Boston's commuter rail network. From mbta.com.

Boston is widely considered the capitol of New England, and as such holds influence over all of that region except western Connecticut, which is largely made up of the suburbs of New York City.

Megalopolis

Following the established pattern, a megalopolis is a group of metropoli. The idea of a megalopolis is a fairly new one and came about as the suburbs and spheres of influence of the metropolitan areas of the northeastern United States began to grow into each other and eventually overlap, leading to greater interdependence of these areas. A megalopolis often has a certain metropolis that is more dominant than the others, but it is theoretically possible to have a megalopolis without a single dominant city, and various metropoli may have equal power within the megalopolis. Referred to as “megaregions” by some authors, megalopoli are, as the last few types have been, more suburban or urban than rural.

A Suburban Megalopolis: The American Southwest

From maps.google.com.

When I say the Southwest, I particularly mean the area that America 2050 suggests is within the sphere of influence of Los Angeles: California south of Bakersfield and San Luis Obispo; the Las Vegas area in Nevada; Arizona south of Flagstaff; and the Mexican border region from Tijuana to Nogales. While Los Angeles is by far the principal metropolis, San Diego, Las Vegas, and Phoenix also fit within this category. Each of these areas has a dense core that is surrounded by suburbs that can sprawl hundreds of miles away from the metropolitan center, and are therefore very low density. Although each metropolis does have some form of public transit, they generally pay a subservient role to highway transportation. The central cities of these metropolitan areas are not terribly strong employment centers, and although there is plenty of central commuting, much of it is also suburb to suburb, bypassing the central city. There are rail connections between San Diego and Los Angeles, and the state of California has been wanting to create a statewide rail system for years, but at least in the near term, there are not many connections between the various metropoli of the Southwest Megalopolis.

An Urban Megalopolis: The American Northeast

From maps.google.com.

 The original megalopolis covers all of New England, New Jersey and Delaware, and the portions east of the Appalachian Mountains of New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia. This string of metropoli includes Boston, Hartford, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington DC, Richmond, and Virginia Beach. This corridor, like Boston above, is made up not only of large, dense cities, but of older cities and towns with good bones that are higher density than in the Southwest. This area has many business and government links between its cities, and as such, travel between metros is very important. Although I-95 does serve this area, commuters also have the option of using Amtrak, which runs its fastest train, the Acela, between Washington and Boston; or a number of private bus carriers that, although not as classy as the train, allow competitive rates for inter-metro travel. The Northeast was planned as the first area in the nation for new high-speed rail because its population density makes it the most feasible; however, unless the Democrats make a big comeback in 2012, it is unlikely that this project will happen any time soon.

Summary

We can’t view the world as just urban and rural. There is a gradient of settlement characters from rural to suburban to urban, and the lines between them are blurry. By the same token, a municipality of 20,000 people should not be referred to with the same word as a municipality of 8 million. They are very different animals, and our vocabulary should reflect that difference. As such, I have proposed this matrix of settlement types. If I missed something, if I’m somehow off base, or if you have anything that you think should be added to this discussion, please leave a comment below.

From http://farrandoarquitecte.blogspot.com/

On the south side of the Leie and the northeast corner of Buda Island, Farrando built Buda Beach as a “landscaped leisure area.” The space is mostly green, a mix of turf and taller, more natural grasses. These green areas are crossed by paths which connect to the road, Ijzerkaai, above, and the new pedestrian bridge, Collegebrug, which connects to the north shore of the Leie. The swerving paths of both the beach and the bridge work really well together. Part of the idea of the park is that sand can be brought in in the summer to form an artificial beach much like the Paris Plage. All in all, I really like this place, although if I had anything to say about it, I would wonder if there is enough seating.

A variety of seating along the Schuylkill River Trail. From http://www.schuylkillbanks.org.

I would think that someone might argue that people could simply seat on the undulating ground which slopes toward the river, much like people often do along the Schuylkill River Trail; while this may work for younger people, older people will not do this and may not use the park. Another lesson from the Schuylkill River Trail could be to use some sort of non-traditional seating, like boulders, to provide a place to sit without looking like something out of a catalog.

From http://farrandoarquitecte.blogspot.com/.

On the other side of the Leie is Diksmuidekaai, which has a much more urban and hardscaped feel than Buda Beach. Starting at the west, it integrates well with the existing bike and pedestrian lanes.

From http://maps.google.com.

These are divided by a row of trees which will become more beautiful as they grow taller and fuller. In every other gap between trees there is a fashionable light fixture which is set at a good pedestrian scale. However, as can be seen in the images above, the bike lane and row of trees later switches, with the bike lane in the center. The architect argues that the benches separate the pedestrian path from the bike lane, but there aren’t enough benches to form a serious divide. A better technique may be to use slightly different pavers or colors of concrete.

I have a few issues with the benches. First of all, as I mentioned above, there aren’t enough of them. They could be bunched together into small groups so that people could sit near each other without necessarily being right next to each other. The benches themselves are the exact type that Jan Gehl warms against: concrete benches with no back and no sort of rear protection, which may not necessarily face the action. They should be given backs, and though it may be best to face the river, it could be good to have some that face the other way so people could watch cyclists on the other side. There probably is no good way to create some sort of backward protection for for those siting on the benches, although if the row of trees remained at the center it could create somewhat of a wall.

All in all, I really like this project. Buda Beach is great, and Diksmuidekaai is really good and could be improved with simple changes in the future. These projects do a great job of improving both sides of a river without being repetitive mirrors of each other, but providing unique, complimentary amenities.

This is a really useful tool for any sort of planning, and I know that anyone could really use it to benefit their projects.

Preparation

The first problem I encountered was that there appears to be no such thing as kylite, one of Alexander’s recommended aggregates. All I could find on the internet were other people quoting Alexander and adds for skylights (Put an “s” on the front and misspell it, you’ll get there). So I went looking around for other lightweight concrete formulas, and found out for the most part that Alexander’s formula still stands if you just replace kylite with sand. I also found that vermiculite and perlite are more or less interchangeable in these formulas, so I wanted to get both so that I could compare their properties. Based on a few different sources, I came up with a recipe of two parts cement, four parts sand, six parts perlite/vermiculite, and three parts water.

Perlite is used as a garden aerator and is actually fairly easy to find at any garden store. Vermiculite, on the other hand, was not so easy to find. According to Home Depot’s website, there are two stores out of the dozen or so in the Philadelphia area that sell vermiculite, neither of which are the ones that are reasonably close/transit accessible. So the next step for me, since my license has expired and I am therefore not legal to drive or use PhillyCarShare, was to find someone willing to drive me to the Upper Darby Home Depot to pick everything up. Eventually Brad Packer from the ward volunteered, and this morning we set out for the store.

At the store, we went and got a 2×4 cut into 30-inch sections with a six inch block left over. We found three cabinet hinges and two clasps. These all would be used to make the concrete form. We then got a bag of sand and a box of cement. I would like to point out that I am quite happy with my purchase of Cement All, partially because they were one of the few manufacturers that sold it in packages that were less than 50 pounds, and they also have a carrying strap and a resealable package, which is great for non-contractors like myself. We headed back to the garden section and…no vermiculite. Apparently Home Depot’s website is full of lies. But they had plenty of perlite, so I grabbed a bag of it and we loaded up the car and took it home.

Assembly

I first cut the last six-inch block into four inch and two inch sections. I then took the four-inch and two of the 30-inch sections and attached them with hinges to the third 30-inch section. This is so that when the concrete is dry, the sides can fold down for easy release. I left the two-inch block unattached so that it can be moved to create sections of different lengths. I put the clasps on the end of the assembly to hold the sides up while the concrete dries.

The concrete form.

By the way, I pretty much did all of this in my kitchen. More on that later.

I then rinsed out a gallon milk jug, quickly made a funnel from a piece of printer paper, and poured my cement and sand into the jug. I then got out a real funnel and added the water, because one of the columns I had read said that it was important to mix the other ingredients first and then add the perlite. Perlite is a really interesting material. It weighs next to nothing and looks like something between corn snow and Styrofoam balls. I added this into the jug, put the lid on, and mixed vigorously for two minutes or so.

My cement mixer.

I started pouring the mixture into the form, and after I got impatient cut the top off the milk jug to speed up the process. The cement came out in thick, heavy globs. The concrete was so thick that it wouldn’t slide down into the form on its own, so I quickly squished my paper funnel into a paper trowel to level it.

This is a real professional job here.

All in all I filled a space about 27 inches long. And then I waited.

Letting the concrete set.

Results

The cement I used was “rapid set,” and was supposed to be set in 15 minutes and cured in an hour (a really exceptionally short time since most concrete can take days or weeks to fully cure). After about three hours, I busted open the form.

See, that's why I put hinges on it. Pretty cool, huh?

I started tapping the concrete with a hammer to loosen it, something that any wood would stand up to, and a section about eight inches broke off at the bottom. This didn’t bode well. I had two tests in mind to examine the density of the material: the nail test and the saw test. In both cases, the material was, if anything, considerably less dense than wood. The nail went in quite easily.

Simple drywall nail in concrete. Sorry for the bad image.

The saw in particular was very telling. My saw is fairly dull, and it took me more effort than I would have wanted to cut the six-inch wood block into two. My saw went through the block like it was cardboard before it split after I got through about two thirds of it.

The broken block. The solid gray part is where it broke without the saw touching it.

It was around this point that I read the warnings on my box of cement which said something along the lines of “do this in a well-ventilated space with a lot of safety gear or else you’ll get cancer,” so I took the remainder of the operation out onto my deck. The main portion of the block was stuck fast to the form, and as I hammered it to get it to come off, it was like hitting a well-built sandcastle. This stuff was nowhere near hard enough to build a house out of. When it finally came off, I took it in one hand and gave it a good solid whack with the hammer. It broke right in half. No two-inch wooden board would break that easily.

What a mess.

Lessons for next time

1. Go outside!
2. I feel that I may have been impatient in only giving it three hours to cure, despite the assurances on the box. Next time I will try giving it a solid 24 hours.
3. Later research into Cement All showed that their product already includes some sand. This could be why the concrete initially came out so globby. I may try replacing the four cups of sand with four more cups of Cement All and see what happens.

That’s all for now, but don’t be surprised to see another edition of The Concrete Chronicles very soon!

Students of the GDBS with their work. From http://www.uh.edu/gdbs/site_installation.html.

Students at the Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture at the University of Houston have a unique opportunity: the Graduate Design-Build Studio program, where students get the opportunity to create a structure from design through fabrication and all the way to construction. These structures, mostly pavilions or other shade structures, while usually fairly simple, provide the students with an invaluable experience.

These projects start as a fairly basic design studio, where students do research and design schemes to try to solve certain problems of a site.

Students in design studio. From http://www.uh.edu/gdbs/spring_design.html.

The more ambitious designs that architects often create are generally pared down to a more workable design, which is appropriate considering most of the students have little to no construction experience. This is important because it helps designers to understand what building is like beyond the design phase. Architects often have trouble picturing how their designs will work for anyone else. While they try to envision how it will be for users (although there are many that aren’t even willing to let that distract them from their artistic statement), few are terribly concerned about the work of welders, carpenters and masons that go into making the building a reality.

Students, after settling on a design, move on to the fabrication phase.

Student working on the metal parts of the pavilion. From http://www.uh.edu/gdbs/shop_fabrication.html.

Students are given arc welders and circular saws and produce the components of their project themselves. This is where the class moves beyond design and into real-world building. This is honestly something that I wish were more widely available for design students. As the kid whose favorite toys were Legos growing up, I wish that we had more opportunities to actually pick up some tools and get our hand dirty. The students assemble the parts in the warehouse to make sure everything fits, and then it is taken apart again and moved to the site.

Professionals do assist the students in using larger tools such as augers and cement mixers, but the students still survey the area, put up forms, work the concrete, and install the fabricated elements.

Students insalling a concrete bench. From http://www.uh.edu/gdbs/site_installation.html.

This project in particular included more specialized work, as solar panels were installed on the roof and wiring had to run from the structure. In the end, the students get a project that they can look at and know that they were a part of from start to finish.

The final product. From http://www.uh.edu/gdbs/current_project.html.

This is a great experience for the students, and also for the users of the new facility, who are often schools and other institutions in need. I don’t at all question the importance and efficacy of the program, and wish that I personally could participate in something so hands-on. However, I do question whether some of the designs are the most appropriate.

Shade is an important element of the public realm in hot places such as Houston. However, there is more than one way to create shade. In many ways, I think that trees or some other sort of landscape installation may be more appropriate for the Houston climate. These structures, while they provide shade, also create added stormwater runoff, which can be an issue when a large storm or hurricane hits Houston. Such a structure may be more appropriate in nearby San Antonio, which gets much less rain. Trees may not work well in San Antonio, where their water requirements might be burdensome, but in much wetter Houston, they might be a better option than permanent structures. While trees could not work as a site for solar panels, there are plenty of existing structures with flat roofs that would work just as well, and may require less copper, an increasingly expensive construction material.

This is a great program, one that should be considered at other graduate design programs, and leads me to ask, when do we students at Penn get to build something?

Base designs from WikiHouse. From http://wikihouse.cc/.

WikiHouse has had Twitter all abuzz today, and a number of design sites have been writing about it (my favorite so far has been at Protein). Basically, the idea is that WikiHouse will have some basic house forms, like the ones above, that a person can download from their website into Google SketchUp. Here they can be arranged and even modified to fit the housing needs of an individual. From SketchUp, the user can hit a “Make this House” button, and WikiHouse will generate drawings for a CNC cutter. The cutter will cut out essentially large jigsaw pieces of 18 mm plywood, which can be assembled into two-layer section.

Assembling the sections. From http://wikihouse.cc/.

These sections can then be spaced out 600 mm and then joined by connectors,

From http://wikihouse.cc/

which are then overlaid by cladding panels. The final product still needs insulation, cladding, sealing and services, but the basic architecture and framing have been taken care of at just the cost of materials, and fairly cheap materials at that, using no power tools and simple fasteners like wing nuts and screws. Twitter user skytempledesign said, “It’s like buying a house from Ikea, except you don’t have to pay.”

The final product. From http://wikihouse.cc/.

Part of what this does is it successfully puts modern architecture and construction into the hands of end users. Whereas before user-made construction has consisted of huts and shanties, this could provide low-cost, high-quality housing for millions. At the same time, it gives people much more control over the design of their homes. The basic forms have somewhat of an angular, post-modern or deconstructivist feel, but they could be modified to fit any design or style. Along with some basic site planning, these designs could maximize sustainability and allow for any sort of decoration (or lack thereof) that people wish to have on their homes. I hope that something like this will allow builders, DIY enthusaists and hobby architects to take part in design and construction in ways that they haven’t been able to before.

From http://www.architizer.com/en_us/projects/view/noain-city-hall/27531/.

The architecture is great, and the urban design, while not superb, could certainly be worse. The question I want to ask is, does this building say “city hall”?

I looked desperately to find the building that this city hall replaced, but I was unable to find anything. Considering fairly recent changes in the administration of the area, it could be possible that the old seat of government rested outside the city, or that it did not exist at all. The situation of the building on the very edge of the developed area of the city also suggests that this was not a demolish-and-replace job, but an entirely new creation.

The urban design that the building is a part of deserves note.

Click to zoom. From http://maps.google.com/.

The city hall sits at the southwest side of a square plaza, with buildings on four sides. The plaza is a bit wide for its buildings (or the buildings are a bit short for the plaza, take your pick), but it’s still fairly nice, even if it feels somewhat empty. The biggest problem with the plaza is that the building to the northwest is way too small, and the large open spaces on either side of it destroy the sense of enclosure for the plaza. On the north side of the city hall is a fairly busy park, and it would be a shame to destroy an amenity like that to complete the square, but at the same time, the plaza is fairly empty while the park thrives. My solution would be to scrap the square, put the park in its place, and build more around the edges. While a street does separate the buildings from the square, it is a fairly narrow and easily traversable street, and parking is relegated to the backs of buildings. Whether intentional or not, the city hall continues a theme of the buildings around the square having a differentiated base and upper stories, accomplished on the older buildings with loggias and on the newer ones by changes in material and building depth. This gives the buildings cohesion despite different materials and architectural styles. With the exception of the squat structure to the northwest, the buildings are of similar scale.

From http://www.archdaily.com/153230/noain-city-hall-zon-e-arquitectos/.

The exterior is made up of two layers. The first, and probably most interesting is a metal grid structure. Alone, this structure works as a brise soleil, shading the structure from high summer sun while allowing lower winter rays to penetrate. What is the more intriguing part of this layer is that flowerpots on the top and bottom of the structure house Virginia Creeper vines, which grow over the structure. The vines are deciduous, so their leaves shade the building from the sun in summer, but after they fall of in winter greater sunlight is allowed into the building. The creeper also ranges in color from green to a deep red, providing visual interest. Its berries also provide food for birds. Although it is beautiful, and probably my favorite element of this building, I have some fears about introducing non-native plants, which have a habit of becoming weeds when their natural predators and competitors are not present. On the roof, solar panels face the south, while a large skylight lets diffuse light into the entire building and also working as a solar chimney to ventilate it.

From http://www.archdaily.com/153230/noain-city-hall-zon-e-arquitectos/.

The second layer is made up of two sub-layers, one of transparent glass and one of a translucent cover that shields most of the building. This translucent layer allows diffuse light to come in throughout the entire building, and turns it into a light-emitting beacon at night. The double layer also provides greater insulation than a single layer of glass alone, making it easier and less energy-intensive to keep the building at a comfortable temperature.

From http://www.archdaily.com/153230/noain-city-hall-zon-e-arquitectos/.

The facade, on all sides, is periodically broken up by large, rectangular overhanging balcony elements. These are colored bright red, providing some much-needed color, and breaking up a facade that, at least from a distance, may otherwise seem somewhat repetitive. Having a weird thing about railings, I’m not wild about the vertical panes of glass with no rail, which a very determined child or clumsy adult might make their way straight through (and as a former janitor I hate because people seem to get their fingerprints all over every conceivable glass surface), but I do see how it makes the elements seem deeper and more connected to both views inside and out.

From http://www.archdaily.com/153230/noain-city-hall-zon-e-arquitectos/.

The central interior feature of the building is an open staircase running through all levels of the building and connecting to corridors on each floor which then connect the offices and meeting rooms. While there are things I dislike about it (railings), I really like this strong, simple and central element that unites the different parts of the building. The interior walls do not reach all the way to the ceiling, which allows light from the outside to further penetrate into the interior. The emphasis on natural light cuts down on the need for electric lighting, while heating and cooling are accomplished by an energy-efficient geothermal system and radiant floor heating and cooling. The climate control and ventilation systems are all synced up on a central computer system that works to optimize both comfort and energy efficiency.

This is, without a doubt, an excellent building. My question though is, is it an excellent city hall? What about this building says government, stability, democracy? Some would say that government transparency is embodied in the design, but I can see few other elements that conjure up the working of government. Part of the reason that classical and neoclassical architecture is so widespread in government buildings is because it conjures up ideas of power, stability, and tradition, which few modern attempts have been able to match. Now, I do not believe at all that all government buildings need to be neoclassical, but I think it is important to investigate what it is about that architectural style that says to people, “democracy.” Is it the association with ancient Greece? Is it the bilateral symmetry? Is it the repeating elements of column and void? Whatever it is, as much as I like this building, I don’t know if it has the elements that label a building as a house of government.