Aug
17
2009
Staunton’s Old Neighborhoods Lead the Way
What’s the greatest threat to humanity? Watch this short video for one interpretation.
Now consider how much of Staunton is built in the “old” way. Many neighborhoods have mature trees and sidewalks. Neighborhoods like Sears Hill even have walking access to Amtrak! In addition, many of us are fortunate enough to be within walking distance of downtown.
As a result, we predict the few places like Staunton that managed to escape “yesterday’s modernization” will have explosive growth and value in the future!
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If we have explosive growth, it has to be of the smart kind. In order to achieve smart growth, we have to begin with making the changes in the city ordinances that will encourage in-fill rather than overflow, density instead of solitary, pedestrians over parking spaces. But it’s not just the ordinances that need changing, it’s the mindset of those in the community who continue to sprawl. They need to be shown that smart growth offers a better life in terms of health, both physical and mental, environment and finances.
Steven,
Agreed. Much of the traditional neighborhood design espoused in that video clip, and evident in many Staunton neighborhoods, is now prohibited by zoning ordinances in almost any municipality you can name. Letting traffic engineers write building codes for a few decades has all but made traditional planning impossible.
But as you stated, the citizens of this and most other traditionally-planned communities you can name, happily went along with abandoning these principles. Rather than clamoring for more walkable arrangements for work, play, etc., the vast majority of people seem perfectly content with the drive-in/drive-out arrangement. And without jobs to walk to, what is the real alternative? Does walking to go get a cup of coffee, dinner and a movie, or to the farmers market have the transformative power to reinstitute the principles of traditional neighborhoods? I personally don’t think so.
We have a generation of children who never walked to school or to the grocery store, who grew up into adults that know nothing but the forty-minute commute to work, big-box retail, etc. Without downtown jobs (and lots of them), a full-service grocery store, clothing stores, etc., I don’t see “explosive growth” (aging boomers notwithstanding) as something we really have to worry about. I do see a largely intact, functioning, walkable downtown, surrounded by quality ag land. Which is a lot more than most places can claim.
Some great points here. I’ve designed and developed many New Urbanist communities and I’v learned a lot of lessons about Old Urbanism in the process. We are fortunate that Staunton has a planning department that also understands the intracacies of density, urbanism and design and are willing to use their Corridor Overlay District to encourage smart growth. That said, there are many flaws to New Urbanism and it isn’t for everyone. The more that we can encourage infill, the more we can support our urban infrastructure but there still has to be a buyer for infill development to let the free-market respond. From what I could tell, only 20-30% of homebuyers would even consider a Tradtional Neighborhood, new or old. One of the cues to any good neighborhood is that there has to be “a there there.” Without that important element of community that brings people together, a park, a downtown, a greenway…then you just end up with a small lot subdivision. I can show you hundreds of examples of failed New Urbanism. In today’s real estate market, it will be even more difficult to find developer (and banks!) willing to spend the money to create the asset that brings a neighborhood together. Thus, I encourage infill where that asset is in place and I encourage all of us to find the good in suburbanism. Remember, we are all Americans because our forefathers left Europe because it was too crowded. Suburbanism isn’t all bad, and it isn’t going away, and it’s time that we spent some energy considering ways it can be improved. Like native plantscapes and less TruGreen fertilizers…
I’m obviously of the 20-30% as I purposefully bought a house in an old neighborhood that has that ‘there’ there. You reference developers spending money to ‘create the asset’, but what I’m referring to is insuring that when those assets are already in place, such as downtown Staunton, we need to work to keep the nearby neighborhoods strong and link to ones that are farther away by things such as the corridor overlay districts and greenways. The vibrant historic districts we have today were not that way back in the 70s and 80s when the new suburban neighborhoods were developing around Staunton. They fell into decay and the concentrated efforts of a few citizens helped to reverse the trend and prevent a dead downtown core.
I think your ‘all Americans’ statement is way over generalized and doesn’t help your argument. Suburbanism is here to stay, but what I am advocating against is growth like that in Richmond and NoVA where after years, you’re left with dead rings of progressively older suburbia. We have a small city with room to improve, it doesn’t have to come in the form of sprawl. We don’t need people coming from these types of areas, falling in love with the quaint downtown, and then building/purchasing in developments that erode the strength of that downtown and instead make a smaller replica of what they so wanted to get away from in the first place.
I’m advocating for design on a human scale, rather than a car scale which will strengthen those assets that Staunton has an abundance of and will serve the make us attractive to people and businesses in the future.
Steven — I think we agree on most of the points, I certainly prefer infill development, strengthening neighborhood assets, focusing on the human-scaled, walkable assets of Downtown Staunton.
I think where we disagree is that I also support suburban growth and encourage its evolution. I don’t believe that suburban growth takes away from the strong urban core of Downtown Staunton. We can do both, we need to do both. Living in an urban area isn’t for everyone, in fact, it is for much less than the majority, so we need to rediscover the strengths of suburbanism and structure it’s evolution. I don’t go out of my way to encrouage suburban subdivisions, but when I work with developers who are dependent on that model (and banks…), I try to find ways where the subdivisions of today become the neighborhoods of tomorrow. Integration of greenways, cluster development techniques, lot/house proportions, architecture(!) all can help transform the model.
I appreciate your viewpoint and I applaud your commitment to urban living. Certainly your family lives the principles.