From NorthJersey.com writer Kathleen Lynn: "How do you fit three bedrooms, 2 1/2 baths, and two decks — not to mention a living room, kitchen and dining area — into a space that's just 13 feet wide and 35 feet deep? That was the puzzle confronting Hoboken architect Anthony Vandermark, a partner in the 12-year-old Hoboken architecture firm Minervini Vandermark, after he and his wife decided to buy a tiny, decrepit Hoboken row house and replace it with a 21st-century home.
"The house is on narrow, cobblestoned Willow Terrace North, where small row houses were built in the 1880s by Hoboken's founding family for construction workers at their Hoboken Land & Improvement Co. The result is a sleek, contemporary home that takes advantage of every inch of space. 'You have to play visual tricks,' Vandermark said. 'If you increase the height of the door head, it makes the volumes feel bigger.' The house recently won merit awards in two AIA competitions." Full article with photos here. (Photo credit: Kevin Wexler.)
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Singapore gov resources about shophouses are detailed, sometimes free, and thought-provoking
The Singapore Urban Redevelopment Authority provides a large selection of publications (printed books and brochures) and circulars (electronic brochures) on conservation, which largely deal with shophouses and their various aspects and are an excellent resource for understanding this small urban building type and how it can be a model for other small-scale infill. For example, the free circular "Conserved Shophouses -- Do's & Don'ts" covers all the significant architectural features of a shophouse and includes many informative and eye-catching photos and drawings. Other titles include: Restoring the Singapore shophouse: The 'top-down' approach, "Understanding the first storey: Five footways and front facades", "Understanding the mechanical and electrical services", "Understanding the doors, windows and vents", "Understanding the partywalls", and "Understanding the roofs".
Guatemala town being built with small blocks, attached buildings, and contextual elevations
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8z2gxzHxb8]From Better! Cities & Towns (formerly New Urban News): "Beyond its historic center, Guatemala City is an automobile-oriented, sprawling metropolis of 4 million people. Amid suburban gated communities, a new traditional, classically-inspired town named Cayalá is being built — to a level of quality that many will find astonishing. "Master-planned in 2003 by Leon Krier with the Guatemala-based firm of Estudio Urbano for the local development company Grupo Cayalá, Cayalá opened its first phase in November 2011. The aim is to create a sustainable, mixed use, pedestrian-oriented environment, where buildings reinforce a sense of place and defer to the human scale.
"The consistency of scale, architectural expression, and materials allows public edifices and monuments to stand out as urban set-pieces, as opposed to self-referential object-buildings, notes Maria Sánchez of Estudio Urbano. With its small urban blocks, three- to four-story building heights, closely-knit network of streets and public spaces, the town center is designed to facilitate interaction and a sense of community, Sanchez says.
"Krier describes the streetscapes made up of building elevations that 'are aligned 
so that they make sense, like the words that form a coherent sentence.' Commercial streets and squares are lined with colonnades, which come from the local vernacular. The entire right-of-way is designed to be comfortable for pedestrians." (Photo credit: Vicente Aguirre.)
Temporary urbanism: contributing to an urban neighborhood short-term, better than never
Can long-term speculation on the development of large, single-use buildings coexist with small buildings that contribute to an urban neighborhood? The answer may be temporary urbanism.
For example, the Dekalb Market in Brooklyn is a collection of shipping containers that serve as a neighborhood retail center but can be moved when the land they occupy is needed for a tower. Dekalb was developed by Urban Space and Young Woo & Associates, and designed by ORE Design. The Architects Newspaper writer Gwen Webber notes: "The modular market sits on the former site of the Albee Square shopping center, now the planned site of the second phase of the CityPoint development in Downtown Brooklyn. The vendors each leased for one year and could individualize the container interiors." Full article here, and Inhabitat has coverage and photo gallery here.
From the Urban Space website: "For over 30 years, USM has been breathing life and energy into a variety of inner city spaces. These may be historic buildings whose circumstances have changed, sites blighted by impending development for which profitable interim uses can be found, or prime downtown locations which cry out for a more imaginative mix of uses. The Urban Space approach is never to impose a solution but to grow it organically from the nature of the space. Creativity, individual enterprise, and often performance arts are essential ingredients."
Another example from a recent issue of Elle Decor: "Douglas Burnham of Envelope Architecture & Deisgn is proving there's a quicker way to change streetscape than waiting for deep-pocketed developers to build on empty lots. When housing projects for two blocks of San Francisco were shelved, Burnham came up with the idea for Proxy [pictured above] -- a temporary village with food, art, culture, and shopping, housed in repurposed shipping containers and tentlike structures. But with only a five-year lease on the property, 'the pieces we bring in need to be modular and mobile.'"
And temporary urbanism can be more than retail, for example the Zeta Lancaster modular units include both retail and housing, and could be moved to make way for a large building.
Penang shophouse preservation, investment, and new business, like South Beach in the 80s
From Voice of America writer Yong Yen Nie: "In Georgetown, decades-old businesses are the major fascination in this heritage enclave, as shown by guide maps detailing traditional trades found here, including the bamboo curtain maker, beaded shoe designer and joss stick maker. However, Georgetown is also seeing an influx of young locals into the town center to start new business ventures. Since the city obtained its status as a UNESCO World Heritage City in 2008, there has been a steady stream of new restaurants, cafes and boutique hotels sprouting in Georgetown, mostly operated by locals under the age of 40 who see potential in expanding the hospitality and services sector.
"A major draw for the young businessmen and women is the town’s charm. 'There is a growing appreciation for old shop houses by tourists and residents alike and hence, life in Georgetown is appealing for living and running businesses,' said Hung, who runs a little cafe on Armenien Street. 'The rent here is cheap, and I am not obligated to operate at stipulated hours, unlike in a shopping mall. As long as I maintain my quality of service and food, I have my little following of customers that gives me consistent businesses,' Hung said." Full article here.
From Star Property write Johnni Wong: "The cost of buying a pre-World War II shophouse in George Town, Penang, has reached a per square foot price equivalent to that of the poshest Kuala Lumpur city centre condominium units. Contrary to popular notion that foreigners and investors from Kuala Lumpur are pushing up prices, recent transactions show that Penang investors are the ones who are buying in a substantial way. This is particularly true among those who have lived abroad.
"Such shophouse properties are often turned into 'heritage' hotels. Probably, the best-known heritage projects are by Penang-born businessman Christopher Ong. Together with business partners, he now owns and operates Muntri Mews, a nine-room hotel which was formerly a stable. The Penaga Hotel project is another well-known development owned by veteran architect Hijjas Kasturi and his wife Angela.
"'Such heritage property are in a classic demand and 
supply situation. The supply side is limited and cannot be increased in tandem with the increase in demand,' says shophouse investor Gooi Kok Wah." Full article here.
For buildings to add up to urban neighborhood, "lose the wiggle", keep facades simple
From the PlaceMakers blog, PlaceShakers: "The townhouse, or rowhouse, is a traditional urban approach to density that, somewhat ironically, has been embraced by suburban builders. Over time, this once simple and elegant species has evolved (some might say devolved) to reflect its newfound environment, with little bits and pieces protruding — wiggling — in the oddest of ways.
"The form’s contemporary suburban architectural expression has (d)evolved from historically restrained, community-minded massing to the highly articulated, erratic, look-at-me forms we know today. Like their single-family brethren, the over-articulated McMansion, suburban townhouses reflect the need for the building to compensate for a lack of beauty and interest in the streetscape. In contrast, in more urban areas that have rowhouses, the continuity of the fabric of the street is embraced as important to the success of the public realm as a whole.
"In newer traditional neighborhoods, suburban retrofits, and infill sites, it’s critical that builders rediscover the idea of streets, rather than single structures, as the amenity. In these strained economic times, it’s more than just a question of style, as builders can find great savings in simpler forms, foundations, and trusses. Lose the wiggle. Here’s five tips on townhouse restraint:
- Keep the façade flat. This saves on cost and frees budget for improved windows and materials.
- Resist non-rational articulation. Use simple solutions like porches, stoops, balconies or bay windows to provide interest while you develop faith in the attraction of the street itself." Full post here.
Boston planned South End small lots to be afforable, and rownhouses to retain middle class
From Boston Globe writer Hope Shannon: "For those of you who might not be familiar with Boston's South End neighborhood, until the early 19th century it was a sort of no-man’s land between the main part of Boston on the Shawmut Peninsula and the town of Roxbury on the mainland. The Shawmut Peninsula ('original' Boston) was connected to the mainland and Roxbury by a long isthmus, the Neck, along which ran a main road, today’s Washington Street.
"In 1801, the town selectmen, including Charles Bulfinch, presented a plan to develop some of the necklands between the main part of Boston and Roxbury. The newly laid out area was meant to attract freestanding construction and houses surrounded by gardens and grounds. However, few people purchased these lots and by the late 1820s, the city of Boston reevaluated the development of the Neck. They planned more streets and divided the blocks into smaller parcels, hoping to attract a wider demographic with smaller and less expensive lot prices.
"By the 1840s, as foreign immigration to Boston increased, the population of the city grew dramatically and tenement housing began to dominate parts of the city. Boston worried that its middle and upper-middle class tax base would leave for the suburbs. In the late 1840s, the selectmen decided to turn the necklands into a rowhouse district to entice these families to stay within the city limits.
"After the city decided to pursue a rowhouse plan, they laid out three residential style squares in 1850-1851: Chester Square (on Massachusetts Avenue today between Tremont St. and Shawmut Ave.), Worcester Square, and Union Park. These squares feature rowhouses facing a central green space with a fountain. Most of the buildings on these squares were built in the 1850s.
"In general, upper-middle class families, many involved in commercial enterprise, lived in most of the houses on the squares. Other South End streets were also developed into rowhouse streets, housing upper-middle and middle class families. Working class families also lived in the district. Their homes were usually on narrower streets located closer to downtown." Full article here.
Video game challenges players to develop street lined with small buildings and mix of uses
Download this game now! From a recent press release: "Glu Mobile Inc., a leading global developer and publisher of Social Mobile games for iOS and Android, announced today its new freemium, family-friendly building game, Small Street. In Small Street, players have the chance to let their creativity and innovation shine as they build an entire town along their own Small Street.
"By constructing a variety of shops, restaurants and adorable townhouses, players can grow a population of citizens to work and play in their town. Matching citizens with their perfect job and the right tiny townhouse is key to keeping the Small Street happy. Features of Small Street include:
- Construct over 40 different shops and buildings in 5 unique business types
- Build townhouses to move in citizens and keep your businesses staffed."
Urban neighborhoods and Linux: part 2, selected morals about crowd-sourced prototypes
More from Eric Raymond’s “The Cathedral and the Bazaar”, each quote from the seminal essay about computer program development suggesting an insight about urban neighborhood development. "It's fairly clear that one cannot code from the ground up in bazaar style. Your nascent developer community needs to have something runnable and testable to play with. Your program doesn't have to work particularly well. What it must not fail to do is (a) run, and (b) convince potential co-developers that it can be evolved into something really neat in the foreseeable future." New urban neighborhood building should be based on existing really neat neighborhoods and prototypical small urban buildings so stakeholders can most easily understand that these buildings will add up to a new really neat urban neighborhood pretty quickly.
"Linus is not an innovative genius of design. Rather, Linus seems to me to be a genius of engineering and implementation, with a sixth sense for avoiding bugs and development dead-ends and a true knack for finding the minimum-effort path from point A to point B. Indeed, the whole design of Linux mirrors Linus's essentially conservative and simplifying design approach." To develop an urban neighborhood, resilience is more important than iconic-ness.
"More users find more bugs because adding more users adds more different ways of stressing the program. Accordingly you release often in order to get more corrections, and as a beneficial side effect you have less to lose if an occasional botch gets out the door." Urban neighborhood development with small buildings can absorb some mistakes, with big buildings there is no room for error.
"While coding remains an essentially solitary activity, the really great hacks come from harnessing the attention and brainpower of entire communities. Perhaps open-source culture will triumph not because cooperation is morally right, but because the closed-source world cannot win an arms race with open-source communities that can put orders of magnitude more skilled time into a problem." Urban neighborhoods are not centrally planned, they are crowd-sourced.
"The Linux world behaves in many respects like a free market or an ecology, a collection of selfish agents attempting to maximize utility which in the process produces a self-correcting spontaneous order more efficient than any central planning could have achieved. Linus was directly aiming to maximize the number of person-hours thrown at debugging and development, even at the possible cost of instability in the code." Small urban buildings are how you get 100 small property owners to make selfish decisions that add up to an urban neighborhood.
8 Singapore shophouses adapted and restored by 7 local architects and 1 smart developer
An exemplary project, from its website: "The Lorong 24A Shophouse Series is a boutique development involving a row of 1920s shophouses. Eight shophouses meet seven local architects — a collective project integrating contemporary design and creative functionality with the traditional charm of the archetypal shophouse.
"The curatorial approach taken to this project allows residents to have their cake and eat it too — enjoying both the harmonious beauty of the collective exteriors, as well as the individual characteristics of the interior worlds.
"The design of each unit takes full advantage of the features of the shophouses, such as high ceilings and deep interiors, but also elegantly addresses typical issues such narrowness and lack of light. The designs also preserve key elements of the traditional 1920s shophouses, such as the colourful and intricate façades, as well as the interaction between the interiors and external environments through courtyards and skylights."
The project is being developed by Pocket Projects, a company that "places a premium on good design, which has the potential to enrich a development by enhancing its functionality and, therefore, financial value. With an open approach to working on both new builds and existing structures, across various uses, Pocket Projects looks forward to engaging in the creation of more spatially-exciting projects in harmony with the local context."
The architects are Atria Architects, KD Architects with FARM, HYLA , Lekker Design, Linghao Architects, Liu & Wo and Zarch Collaboratives (some of the shophouses are still under renovation). The project website also includes extensive photos of each shophouse. The HYLA shophouse is elucidated by the following videos (developer, architect, resident):
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qU1Ir_ub124]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPiY1ZWXP-U]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYVgDsCoGu4]
Good news for small urban buildings: top architecture critics shift focus to neighborhoods
25,000 hits! From Intl Biz Times writer Roland Li: "An A-list quartet of architecture critics discussed their craft on Monday night at the AIANY’s Center for Architecture in Manhattan, arguing for the vitality of buildings in modern life and the impact of criticism in a changing world. Although tops in their field, the critics – Paul Goldberger of the New Yorker, Justin Davidson of New York magazine, Cathleen McGuigan of Architectural Record and James Russell of Bloomberg -- all feel the pressure of the new reality. "Julie Iovine, executive editor of the Architect’s Newspaper and moderator of the panel, spoke of a 'sea change,' the move away from starchitects to a focus on affordability, sustainability and context. Michael Kimmelman, the Times’ current architecture critic, has heralded the split, 'repoliticizing' his beat by writing about housing projects, urban planning and the street level. He has avoided, perhaps consciously, the singular building, instead seeking to encapsulate a neighborhood.
"And it is the consideration of the political, social and economic factors, the forces behind the art, that truly distinguishes the great critics. 'If you don’t engage social issues, it’s just about comparing shapes,' said Goldberger." Full article here.
Urban neighborhoods and Linux: many small, open-source, constantly-refined components
FASLANYC’s post inspired me to read Eric Raymond’s “The Cathedral and the Bazaar” from 1996, which is about the Linux computer operating system, but if you change a few words could be about urban neighborhoods. I'm going to dedicate 2 posts to the essay, this week the basic setup and Raymond's own summary points (you can spend more than a week thinking about how they might apply to urban neighborhood development), and next week more from the body of the essay. "Who would have thought that a world-class operating system could coalesce as if by magic out of part-time hacking by several thousand developers? Linus Torvalds's style of development — release early and often, delegate everything you can, be open to the point of promiscuity — came as a surprise. No quiet, reverent cathedral-building here — rather, the Linux community seemed to resemble a great babbling bazaar of differing agendas and approaches out of which a coherent and stable system could seemingly emerge only by a succession of miracles.
"Chance handed me a perfect way to test my theory, in the form of an open-source project that I could consciously try to run in the bazaar style. I'll use it to propose some aphorisms about effective open-source development.
- Every good work of software starts by scratching a developer's personal itch.
- Good programmers know what to write. Great ones know what to rewrite (and reuse).
- 'Plan to throw one away; you will, anyhow.'
- If you have the right attitude, interesting problems will find you.
- When you lose interest in a program, your last duty to it is to hand it off to a competent successor.
- Treating your users as co-developers is your least-hassle route to rapid code improvement and effective debugging.
- Release early. Release often. And listen to your customers.
- Given a large enough beta-tester and co-developer base, almost every problem will be characterized quickly and the fix obvious to someone.
- Smart data structures and dumb code works a lot better than the other way around.
- If you treat your beta-testers as if they're your most valuable resource, they will respond by becoming your most valuable resource.
- The next best thing to having good ideas is recognizing good ideas from your users. Sometimes the latter is better.
- Often, the most striking and innovative solutions come from realizing that your concept of the problem was wrong.
- 'Perfection (in design) is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but rather when there is nothing more to take away.'
- Any tool should be useful in the expected way, but a truly great tool lends itself to uses you never expected.
- When writing gateway software of any kind, take pains to disturb the data stream as little as possible — and never throw away information unless the recipient forces you to!
- When your language is nowhere near Turing-complete, syntactic sugar can be your friend.
- A security system is only as secure as its secret. Beware of pseudo-secrets.
- To solve an interesting problem, start by finding a problem that is interesting to you.
- Provided the development coordinator has a communications medium at least as good as the Internet, and knows how to lead without coercion, many heads are inevitably better than one."
Next week, excerpts about why this approach not only works, but also may result in better outcomes for computer programs...and urban neighborhoods.
Two books about small-scale infill by Miami-based architect, one is free for electronic version
Miami-based architect Jason Chandler has published two books about small-scale infill. The first is Engaging the Urban: Infill Projects by Young Miami Architects, "a record of an exhibit that occurred at the FIU School of Architecture Cejas Building in 2009 that showcased new infill projects by young architects in greater Miami. 19 projects from the exhibit were selected for this publication, the majority of which are built."
The second is Artist Housing, the culmination of a studio (Jason is also a professor at FIU) in which students designed artist housing for Miami inspired by a trip to Savannah at the start of the semester. Jason teaches a studio every academic year that begins with a trip to Savannah, possibly the closest city to Miami with a relatively continuous fabric of small prototypical buildings, so students can see the kind of buildings that are most likely to make a great urban neighborhood.
Headline impossible to improve: "Skyscrapers linked to impending financial crashes"
From BBC, with many caveats including that bankers are not necessarily trained in statistical analysis: "There is an 'unhealthy correlation' between the building of skyscrapers and subsequent financial crashes, according to Barclays Capital. Examples include the Empire State building, built as the Great Depression was under way, and the current world's tallest, the Burj Khalifa, built just before Dubai almost went bust. 'Often the world's tallest buildings are simply the edifice of a broader skyscraper building boom, reflecting a widespread misallocation of capital and an impending economic correction,' Barclays Capital analysts said. The bank noted that the world's first skyscraper, the Equitable Life building in New York [pictured], was completed in 1873 and coincided with a five-year recession. And Malaysia's Petronas Towers in 1997, which coincided with the Asian financial crisis." Full article here, and Barclays Capital Skyscraper Index here.
Recap of Strong Towns presentation in Miami about fiscally-responsible development
Very last-minute, I got word that CNU Miami was presenting a Strong Towns Curbside Chat on Saturday afternoon. I attended and was inspired. Charles Marohn spoke about how the late 20th century pattern of development, particularly infrastructure, does not pay for itself. Download the Curbside Chat booklet here. Among the discussion of infrastructure, Charles had a few slides about what kind of buildings generate more property tax per acre and requires less infrastructure. No surprise: 6-story, mixed-use, urban development generates 100 times the property tax per acre of a big box retail store. The slides, below, were made by collaborator Joseph Minicozzi of Urban 3 in Asheville, NC. Recent article including slides here, and video of Joseph speaking at UM last year here.
Johannesburg attached, adaptable prototype included in database for developing economies
From 26'10 South Architects: "Can we imagine a move towards a dynamic flexibility which can deliver subsidised housing in which the unit becomes an asset leading to income generation? The housing types proposed for Diepsloot attempt to achieve higher occupational density in order to achieve minimum displacement of residents.
"The design also attempts to enable income generation through accommodating rental rooms, retail and small business enterprise. In addition ground floors are conceived as flexible spaces accommodating both trade and/or residential use. Circulation and services are positioned in such a way as to provide for these diverse occupation scenarios. This allows for economic development over time, especially along busy routes.
"Houses are located close to the street boundary to create a sense of urbanity, surveillance, ease of trading and to limit the amount of unusable space between units. The increased densities also achieve the necessary thresholds for the efficient provision of public transport and economic opportunities. Both the Vertical Yard and the 14x7m Row House offer two different approaches to achieve growth over time and a mix of uses and economies." Full page with images here.
From the write-up about 26'10 South's proposal included in the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum's Design Other 90 Network: "The proposed housing types incorporate dynamic aspects of the informal city, such as flexibility and growth. The increase in density allows the units to be larger by saving money on land cost, infrastructure, and services."
Design Other 90 Network is an "open-network database" and "social-media platform that invites everyone to:
- Share vital design resources for developing and emerging economies.
- Connect with stakeholders in the fields of design, architecture, sustainability, humanitarian aid, and more.
- Engage a broad international audience in developing solutions for those living in poverty."
New York townhouse market 10-year report, 2011 edition, suggests new rental transaction volume
Douglass Elliman just released the 2011 edition of its annual New York townhouse market 10-year report, prepared by Miller Samuel. From Jonathan Miller's blog: "I define a 'townhouse' as a 1-5 family house that can be delivered vacant. It’s one of my favorite reports to work on because the market is so unique. Purchasers rarely view these properties as vehicles for cash flow – in appraisal parlance, their 'highest and best use' is eventual conversion to single family occupancy."
The report is copy protected, so I'll respect that. But from Real Deal writer Adam Fusfeld: "Sales activity increased 22 percent between 2010 and 2011 to 240 transactions, the highest total since the credit crunch. But Miller said it’s about on point with the 10-year average of 250 sales. A decade’s worth of data show a 112 percent increase, according to Miller, because there’s so little new construction in the townhouse market. In fact, the townhouse stock is so old that the average townhouse sold during the decade was built in 1908.
"'The numbers make the case for a long-term view of housing,' he said. 'Real estate professionals lost their way, viewing it as a short-term investment. As an asset it’s slow-moving, but we had a different standard during the boom of double-digit price increases and that’s the wrong approach. Property shouldn’t be considered a liquid asset like a stock.'"
From Crain's writer Amanda Fung: "The median sale price dipped 5.1% to about $3.7 million last year, while the average sales price slid 9.4% to roughly $5 million. The decline was largely a result of a steep rise in sales of three-to-five-family houses, which represented 38.3% of all sales last year, compared to 22.3% in 2010. Mr. Miller attributed the increase in sales of this house type to a boom in the rental market, which is emboldening some buyers of three-to-five-family houses. Those three-to-five-family houses also tend to be smaller in size than single-family houses. Over the last decade, single-family homes averaged 4,837 square feet and three-to-five-family houses average 4,420 square feet.
"Despite the dip in prices last year, townhouse prices have handily outpaced the overall residential market in terms of price growth this past decade. Townhouse median sales prices have more than doubled since 2002, while median sales prices in Manhattan overall have risen 89% to $850,000." (Photo credit: Buck Ennis.)
Manifesto from 1987 says urban neighborhoods require "many, separate, distinct buildings"
Old Urbanist's post inspired me to read Jacobs and Appleyard's "Toward an Urban Design Manifesto" of 1987. It's worth a read, but don't take my word for it, here are a few teasers. In the prologue, Jacobs writes: "What follows, then, is an assertion of what urban places ought to be. That is what manifestoes are all about." The authors share their list of general goals for urban life -- livability; identity and control; access to opportunity, imagination, and joy; authenticity and meaning; community and pubic life; urban self-reliance; and an environment for all -- and then get manifesto-ing: "We have some ideas, at least, for how the fabric or texture of cities might be conserved or created to encourage a livable urban environment. There are five physical characteristics that must be present if there is to be a positive response to the goals and values we believe are central to urban life: livable streets and neighborhoods; some minimum density of residential development as well as intensity of land use; an integration of activities -- living, working, shopping -- in some reasonable proximity to each other; a manmade environment, particularly buildings, that de- fines public space (as opposed to buildings that, for the most part, sit in space); and many, many separate, distinct buildings with complex arrangements and relationships (as opposed to few, large buildings)."
Did they say many, separate, distinct buildings are required for a "livable" (I'm not a fan of the word) urban environment? Yes, and to elaborate: "Diversity, the possibility of intimacy and confrontation with the unexpected, stimulation,are all more likely with many buildings than with few taking up the same ground areas. For a long time we have been led to believe that large land holdings were necessary to design healthy, efficient, aesthetically pleasing urban environments.
"Architects of both ideological persuasions promulgated or were easily convinced of the wisdom of land assembly. It’s not hard to figure out why. The results, whether by big business or big government, are more often than not inward-oriented, easily controlled or controllable, sterile, large-building projects, with fewer entrances, fewer windows, less diversity, less innovation, and less individual expression than the urban fabric that existed previously or that can be achieved with many actors and many buildings.
"With smaller buildings and parcels, more entrances must be located on the public spaces, more windows and a finer scale of design diversity emerge. A more public, lively city is produced. It implies more, smaller groups getting pieces of the public action, taking part, having a stake. To keep public frontages alive, free from the deadening effectsof offices and banks, small buildings will help more than large ones. There need to be large buildings, too, but they will be the exception, not the rule." Full essay here.
Promoting small buildings for better urban neighborhoods: "affordable-accessible" housing
Recently I asked readers how they would promote small buildings for better urban neighborhoods. Todd Litman sent a paper he authored for the Victoria Transport Policy Institute titled "Affordable-Accessible Housing In A Dynamic City: Why and How To Increase Affordable Housing Development In Accessible Locations". Todd defines affordable-accessible housing as "lower-priced apartments, townhouses, duplexes, small-lot single-family and accessory suites located in neighborhoods with shops, schools, healthcare and jobs that are easy to reach by walking, bicycling and public transit". Sounds good, let's keep reading:
"Many current policies and planning practices discourage accessible-affordable housing development. These include restrictions on building height, density and type; generous minimum parking requirements; and fees and taxes structured to favor fewer, more expensive units.
"There are many possible ways to increase housing and transportation affordability, but some are better than others because they reduce rather than shift costs, and support other strategic objectives such as reducing vehicle traffic and sprawl.
"Some relatively modest policy reforms can greatly improve affordability and accessibility, and therefore the lives of physically and economically disadvantaged people. These include changes to zoning codes to allow more diverse housing types, reduced parking requirements, improving walking and cycling conditions, and improved public transit service." Full paper here.
Phuket shophouses: a city's cultural tourism logo is the architectural style of its small buildings
From Phuket.com: "A must-do in Phuket is a walk in the old part of Phuket City, around Thalang, Dibuk and Krabi roads. The beautiful architecture along these roads will take you back the charm of a century ago. A style of building in particular stand out: the shop-house (Sino-Portuguese style).
"No one knows exactly when the first building in this style was constructed, but old photographs from the reign of King Rama V (1853-1910) show that it was already well established by then. The shop-house was a place for a family to both live and do business, using the front of the building for trading and the remainder, including the upper floor, as their private home.
The floor plans of all these shop-houses are very similar: five metres wide but as much as 50 metres long, creating a very spacious living space for an entire family. Across the front of each, along the edge of the street, is an arcade, offering shade and shelter to the public. Behind this, the house is usually divided into four parts. There is a living room for general purposes and for receiving guests, followed by a central space, open to the sky, with a well. At the rear is the kitchen. Upstairs is the family’s private area and bedrooms.
"In the old days, the central open area was often the heart of the house. It was here that you would find the women of the house chatting while cooking or doing the washing. It was also, in a sense, the lungs of the house, allowing air to flow through, even in the hottest month. Also contributing to the cool atmosphere were the thick, solidly-built walls."
"The core of the Old Town essentially is made up of five roads and several 'sois' (small streets). Soi Rommanee (sometime written ‘Rommani’ or 'Romanee') is located in the heart of Phuket Old Town. Like many streets in Phuket’s old quarter, there are lots of attractive Sino-Portuguese style shop-houses. Shop-houses are usually found built in rows, giving rise to the Hokkien Chinese term tiam choo, meaning a row of shop-houses." Full page with photos here.