Congress for the New Urbanism

Larry Beasley may be the most important person you’ve never heard of, at least concerning our quality of life in Dallas. We should certainly hope so. He is special advisor to Dallas CityDesign Studio, a new institution established to improve our quality of life through better urban design.

 Along with Studio managers Brent Brown and David Whitley, Larry addressed an assembly of this area’s most ardent urbanists last week at the Belmont Hotel in north Oak Cliff.  Characterizing nearly all 20^th-century cities as brutal, ugly places worthy of the escape many have sought in suburban hinterlands, the vision they put forth is a clarion call to connect, humanize and beautify our realm.

But more than words and ideas filled the balmy night air. There was the subtle excitement that accompanies anticipation of momentous change. Among the collective yearnings of the diverse audience one could sense an aching will to transform our city into a place worthy not only of acceptance or respect, but of genuine love.

 What kind of place is worthy of such affection? One that caters to the complete palate of human tastes. More than just mixed-use and the newly-fashionable “live-work-play” motif to sate daily needs, a truly gratifying habitat satisfies our fickle psychological appetites. We humans are indeed complex and contradictory creatures, possessing, for example, in-built desires for both Prospect and Refuge. Prospect brings excitement and possibility. Refuge allows us to retreat and regroup. 

 The sense of Prospect is best delivered by intensely urban, exciting centers, the hardscapes catering to man’s sociability; Refuge, its counterpart, by tranquil, natural settings inviting solitude and contemplation. Such an array of desires demands a full gamut of environments, from natural to urban, in close proximity.

 Fortunately, plans of such variety have been drafted, including the Trinity River Vision, ForwardDallas!, and most recently, Vision North Texas. But the gulf between vision and implementation is the death knell of many a seedling plan. Tending it from germination to full fruition requires constant effort and effective tools. Three that are available to us now will go far in manifesting all of these visions, whether local or regional in scope.

Land-Use. Zoning and coding is the DNA of urban development, and a thorough overhaul is overdue throughout hundreds of jurisdictions across North Texas. The DNA in place nearly everywhere, “conventional suburban development”, segregates land uses so that commerce, industry, and housing are all physically separated, linked only by the auto.

 Mixed-use development is a positive step, and many cities are adopting zoning overlays to enable it. But mixing uses does not itself assemble these urban components into appealing places. Cities eager to offer a more urban, vital lifestyle are adopting “form-based codes”, which are concerned with the physical form of buildings, and their arrangement into mutually-supportive urban patterns, rather than the uses to which buildings are put. Form-based codes foster the creation of walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods, and represent real progress.

 Enter the SmartCode, a form-based planning system structured on the “rural to urban transect”, reflecting man’s habitat from lowest to highest intensity of use: from wilderness through farmland to residential neighborhoods, town centers, and ultimately, to urban core areas. The SmartCode presents a comprehensive solution to planning that can deliver Refuge as well as Prospect, natural and rural preservation as well as urban vitality. This is why it is such an important conceptual breakthrough. 

 Unlike planning systems in which each parcel is assessed for use on an ala carte basis, the SmartCode is taxonomic. This crucial feature requires explaining. 

 Standing in the rural countryside of a small town, you might notice that there are swales, but no sidewalks. They’re simply not needed. Houses are scattered and distant from roadways, and traffic is low enough along country lanes that vehicles and any pedestrians easily accommodate each other. 

 In town though, the situation changes. You see that blocks of residential houses are closer to the street, and that higher levels of traffic require separate pathways for pedestrians and cars. Advance further toward the town center, and you’ll notice that the sidewalks get wider as the buildings become taller and advance toward the street, with no “setback” at all. At each stage of increasing density, note too how supporting infrastructure also evolves:

• street lights - from none in the country, to a lamp on every block, to continuous lighting downtown

• signage - large and distant on rural roads, legible at highway speeds; at immediate streetside in residential areas, six to ten feet high; at eye-level in the town center, legible by pedestrians

• trees – from native, standalone trees with huge canopies in the country, to trees of similar type planted in rows along parkways in town, to manicured trees downtown, spaced evenly in sidewalk planters or pots.

These elements are mutually-supportive. They tell us where we are in the continuum from edge to center. At least, they used to, prior to the auto, when the logic of development was constrained by distance. 

 The result is “authenticity of place”, the sense we feel when everything seems to belong where it is. Contrast this with environments built in recent decades. Do you notice how much of it looks “kitsch”? Humans seek consistent patterns, and we notice aberrations: the fake Tudor frontage on the ranch-style suburban home; the split-rail fence evoking the need to fence in livestock, but fronting a parking lot downtown. 

 In the parlance of the SmartCode, these are “transect violations”; the placement of something into a context where it visibly does not belong. The SmartCode re-asserts taxonomic logic to keep “like with like” so that resulting places are immersive in character. This is crucial to authenticity of place, which helps orient us to our surroundings.

 The SmartCode is also scalable. Although it can be applied region-wide to address the rural-to-urban transect described above, its provisions can be excised and applied wherever needed along that continuum. If your concern is just one residential zone or the town center, for example, the elements appropriate to that particular context, applied in isolation, will retain their collective coherence.

 Importantly, the SmartCode also allocates, but does not prohibit. Because its breadth encompasses the full human habitat, projects of almost any kind can find a comfortable, appropriate place within its guidelines; just not in the random way that has earned our auto-centric cities such derision.

 Properly applied, and over time—say, by 2050, as envisioned in the Vision North Texas plan—the SmartCode’s simple logic and guidelines can provide nearly every North Texan access to environments of both Prospect and Refuge, among walkable places of authentic character.

 Transportation. To say that transportation policy affects land-use understates the truth. Transportation IS land-use. The promise of the auto was to overcome distance, and it did so…brilliantly! But in defeating distance, it destroyed Place. Autos exert a centrifugal force on development, distending its form. Abetted by segregated, single-use zoning, the car has devolved over decades from a spatial liberator into an essential prosthetic, required by all to access even the most basic of needs.  

 Good urban “place-making” requires a public realm activated by pedestrians, which in turn involves spatial enclosure, focal points of interest, and varied activities all in close proximity. This is where rail transit offers great remedial promise for our region. 

 Rail is centripetal by nature. It concentrates development in singularly dense locations, enabling the creation of lively centers. Speaking only of its role in shaping development—never mind its contributions to conservation, public health, relief of road congestion, urban renewal and more—the expansion of multi-tiered rail transit can help re-nucleate our centerless suburbs, creating nodes of urban vitality to provide people the sense of Prospect. This is the kind of development we need now, in view of population growth, demographic trends, and the desire among growing segments of the public for environments of urban character.

 Multi-tiered rail means trolleys in addition to more light rail, commuter rail and even intercity passenger rail. High-speed or not, a multi-tiered rail network will be key to the viability of a DFW with twelve million citizens.

 So much for Prospect, what about Refuge? Progress is continuing on the Dallas County Trails Plan and NCTCOG’s Regional Veloweb. Completing the region’s expanding network of trails and linking them with train transit can place natural or rural landscapes within easy access of most residents throughout our region, even as it connects them with our densest urban centers.

 Such “multi-modal” linkages can make a bike-train-bike or similar pedestrian combination possible for hundreds of thousands of North Texas commuters, adding healthy variety to their daily life. In combination with off-road access via trails and “complete streets” on key urban routes—thoroughfares explicitly designed to safely accommodate pedestrians and bicyclists as well as cars—expanded rail can catalyze a healthier lifestyle throughout our region. DART and other agencies must play a vital role in supporting this outcome by providing explicit pedestrian/bicycle access to all rail stops, and employers can assist by offering shower facilities at work.

 Where park land or any available tract is expansive enough to enable it, community gardens can also be established, providing locally-grown food that is as accessible as today’s trip to the grocery store. Community-supported agriculture (CSA) is a burgeoning trend nationwide, and if this sounds far-fetched for North Texas, it is only because it is so conceptually distant from our current living arrangement. The amount of produce that can be grown on even tiny parcels is staggering, and organic, locally-grown food promises both better nutrition and a gratifying connection to nature.

 Over time, these changes can revolutionize our living arrangement, offering an optional “Plan B” of greater experiential variety, health, and community than its autos-only counterpart.

 But achieving all of this will require a final indispensable tool.

 You.

 Larry is right. Our cities largely remain brutal, degrading places.

 Pick any 8-lane arterial road sporting dual-turn lanes from multiple directions, and consider using the intersection crosswalk provided. The body tightens, the pulse quickens, pupils dilate at the menacing onslaught of steel, the screech of tires, the whoosh of air that brushes you back on the curb. Self-preservation screams “break the law”, and commands you to walk well away from the intersection, cross one set of lanes to the median, then wait there to cross the opposite lanes when they clear. Technically this is jay-walking, but I’ll bet you won’t have the nerve to use the crosswalk.  Nor should you, in utter violation of your senses. Such is the hostility of the pedestrian realm today.

 Once off the street, architecture often defies us too, confronting us with blank monolithic walls, or where they exist, windows that don’t open. Pallid, artificial light and stale air deny occupants inside any sense of the weather outside. No one is spared. This is the spawn of an architectural movement so degrading that it proudly proclaimed itself “Brutalist”. Such places are not worthy of us. 

 Self-esteem and respect for our descendants demand better. We often speak of our best buildings as “dignified”, but a building itself is lifeless. What it dignifies is us; with its utility, comfort, and beauty. 

 Fortunately, gathering reform efforts place a light breeze at our backs. Walkable infill projects, added trails, new trolleys, burgeoning urban agriculture, grassroots initiatives for better blocks and complete streets... multiplied in force by evolving trends, these movements could coalesce into a strong wind.

 Friends in high places help. In celebrating the release of “North Texas 2050”, Fort Worth mayor Mike Moncrief proclaimed “Business as usual is dead”, and represented established authority in heralding a new era whose organizing principle and paramount goal is “Quality of life”.

 But even against such strong winds of change, inertia is an implacable foe. Each step forward seems fraught with obstacles, setbacks, impediments that favor the status quo. The journey will be long and daunting. When we flag, as we will at times, we need only remember that the city is a human creation. It exists for us, and while we are not all experts in urban planning, we are expert in assessing how well it fulfils our own needs and desires. 

 When asked what qualified him to challenge specialized “experts” on the design of existing places, Andres Duany once retorted, “Excuse me? This is the human habitat. I am a human, with eyes, legs, and a brain. As such, I am fully-equipped to assess the quality of my environment.” So are we all.

 Inspired with the courage of such conviction, let us resolve to redeem this vast region. Trust your senses, express your heart, and together, we can re-fashion our realm into one that is livable and lovable.