The rise of New Urbanism

Are modern cities — and the modernist architecture it spawns — doomed to fail? Architect Leon Krier thinks so. And so do I.

Here’s the philosophy behind the New Urbanist movement:

Krier presents the first principle of architecture as a deduction from Kant’s Categorical Imperative, which tells us to act only on that maxim that we can will as a universal law. You must, Krier says, “build in such a way that you and those dear to you will use your buildings, look at them, work in them, spend their holidays in them, and grow old in them with pleasure.” Krier suggests that modernists themselves follow this dictum—in private. Modernist vandals like Richard Rogers and Norman Foster—between them, responsible for some of the worst acts of destruction in our European cities—live in elegant old houses in charming locations, where artisanal styles, traditional materials, and humane scales dictate the architectural ambience. Instead of Bernard Mandeville’s famous principle of “private vices, public benefits,” it seems that they follow the law of private benefits, public vice—the private benefit of a charming location paid for by the public vice of tearing our cities apart. Rogers in particular is famous for creating buildings that have no relation to their surroundings, that cannot easily change their use, that are extremely expensive to maintain, and that destroy the character of their neighborhoods—buildings such as the Centre Pompidou in Paris, for which a great acreage of humane streets had to be cleared and which deliberately turns its back on the historic quarter of the Marais; or the Lloyd’s Building in London, a piece of polished kitchenware surmounted by a pile of junk, dropped in the city as if from a passing airplane.

Calgary, it must be said, is not a categorically ugly city, though it is not entirely charming either. It was built too fast over too short of a period of time, and thus its development of character has been doomed from the start. That’s nothing to be ashamed about — rapid growth can only be had due to enormous success, and Calgary has been a tremendous success economically and (dare I say it?) culturally.

While some effort has been made to produce neighbourhoods on the New Urbanist model — most notably Mackenzie Towne and Garrison Woods — it seems that it’s been too little, too late for most of this sprawling burg. It is a suburb city gone mad, with sprawling, completely unwalkable communities which require automotive transportation simply to go down to the corner store to purchase some milk. (If there such a corner store exists, that is.) No wonder people love their SUVs in this town — I would too if I were forced to spend two hours a day in my car.

Worse still, the cookie-cutter homes and rigid zoning bylaws all but permanently assure that not one ounce of character and uniqueness can develop, which would be an even bigger disappointment if the residents ever took to leave their homes in order to engage their neighbours.

However, this does not stop at simple choice of architecture in new developments. His Worship the Mayor might deny that he is simply propagating the obtrusive modernist mentality today, but when he designs a new LRT line whose only purpose is to ferry workers to the downtown core, that is exactly what he is doing. Not that I disagree with the idea of rapid transit, and I’m not going to get off on the spectacular failure of the city administration to communicate with the afflicted communities during this planning stage. What concerns me more is that lack of priority given to connect various corporate and economic centres around the city. Instead of focusing on how to get every worker in the entire city to work in one area, the city should do more to encourage alternative corporate centres to develop.

In fact, without any help from the city at all, other corporate centres are popping up, including a growing tendency for companies to set up their offices at the airport and, more importantly, in the city’s southeast. The latter is the second-busiest district for workers in the city, yet His Worship the Mayor has acquiesced that those workers are far better off driving their cars or relying on the poorly managed transit system to get these people to work. Investing the $800 million presently being doled out for the West LRT — an system which is designed solely to encourage housing development in the western suburbs — takes away from investing in workers in an alternative commercial zone for another 10 years or more.

And don’t get me started on the lack of progress of the LRT line reaching the airport.

In truth, New Urbanism is (or ought to be) the way of the future: smaller town centres featuring organic growth in terms of architecture and space planning, adequate public transportation to the surrounding communities, and a quality of life which will prevail long after oil hits $200 a barrel.