Who knew architecture was that important?
After finishing Kunstler’s book, “The Geography of Nowhere” I talked with a couple of my friends (one is an architect) and said that I had been unaware of the importance of architecture in how we live and our interaction with the environment. I got surprised looks. Apparently they are well aware of this and I am (was) the naive one. Hmmm.
So, this is an amazing book. For anyone who grew up in North America and knows that something is really wrong with suburbia but is not sure why, this book walks you through it. For those who visit NA and cannot fathom why we build this way, this book will give you the history in an engaging way.
After sad stories of functional buildings devoid of meaning and stories of garish development trying to inject meaning and heartbreaking stories of lost animal habitat and farmland, he tells of options and hope.
But this hope means we need to completely change many of our (comfortable) patterns and planning by-laws and insurance reasonings.
One main about-face needs to be removing laws against mixed use. In order to have meaningful places to live and work, these need to not be separate. Think shops on the main floor of a building with apartments above. But where I live, this is an increased risk for insurance companies so your premiums will be higher.
We need not simply denser housing (than in the suburbs), but communities / housing sections where all the essentials are within a 15 minute walk.
I think I learned that developers follow the rules. And the rules we have facilitate suburban sprawl. Houses must be set back from the road. Houses must have garages. Back lanes are not allowed. Often there are no sidewalks. This means there is little connection to our neighbours and the street. An ugly garage is visible for every house. You must have a car because walking is dangerous on the road.
New stores need to include parking and must be set back off the road. So, what do you see along a street? Asphalt and cars and ugly one story strip malls. Not nice looking, and difficult for the pedestrian.
I want to read my city’s bylaws and see what it the picture they will inevitably paint. It isn’t enough to say we don’t want sprawl. The bylaws for how development is allowed must be changed.
I believe developers will change if the rules they follow are changed. And the rules can be made to promote development that is nice to live and work in, and is sustainable and not so wasteful of resources.
(I didn’t mention Kunstler’s points on how architecture needs to be nice looking and harmonious. He’s mostly against flat roofs, etc. He explains it well.)
One question remains however, what do we do with the junk that we’ve built? Does it just get torn down to make way for better styles? I hope there is a way to modify it as the economic cost is huge to correct a mistake by starting over.
[Feb. 2/07 Addition: Today, my local paper ran a story about noticing for the first time how oriented our building practises are towards cars. Good read!]