The Seaside Debates: A Critique of the New Urbanism : the Seaside Institute, Seaside, Florida

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The Seaside Debates: A Critique of New Urbanism

Bressi, Todd W., Rizzoli International Publications Inc, 2002.

Picking up the Seaside Debates was like picking up an old friend and catching up on the news before going onto the Club for an evening of undemanding bonhomie. The book is billed as a critique of New Urbanism organised by the Seaside Institute. We are all familiar with the aims of the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) to change American land-use patterns, suburban development and reinvigorate its cities. The Seaside Institute's mission is to help revive civic life. How much of the book is a critique, and how much a publication by the Club for the Club is a moot point.

There is no doubt that New Urbanism has had an important effect on some of our housing developments. The Prince's Foundation and through them English Partnerships have promoted the ideals that essentially reflect those principles of good urban design and lifestyle that we have found so difficult to articulate in the past. Whilst Poundbury may have created dissension through its use of English Nostalgia as a 'style', its principles have not gone un-noticed. New Urbanism has challenged the conventions of volume builders' suburban ideal. Indeed some of the new 'townships' in America, such as Kentlands, show the difference of approach in layout, quality and form. The problem is that if New Urbanism is not to end up an exercise in re-arranging the deckchairs on a sinking Titanic, it has to address urbanism rather than private sector sub-urbanism. However successful the gated subdivisions, however supportive the urban design community is of such aspects as the lexicon of design codes, or the Charter, the scepticism within the development professions to the application of such ideas to the complexity of inner area regeneration has exposed fuzziness in CNU's intellectual approach.

The book responds to this issue by illustrating a number of projects that try to resolve the difficulties faced by urban designers attempting to apply CNU principles to urban centres. But first, before we get to that inner sanctum, CNU stalwarts such as Peter Katz, Stefanos Polyzoides and his partner Elizabeth Moule, and the CNU guru Andres Duany emolliently greet us. We are presented with the history and charter of the Club. Then two 'gatekeepers' are there to test us - before we are allowed in. Jaquelin Robertson, one-time Dean of Architecture at the University of Virginia explores the aesthetics of nostalgia and collective memories that embody the 'inviting urbanism' of Seaside, which he compares to architecture's VW beetle facing the demons of Detroit. He suggests that the individualism of the culture rather than its communalism has resulted in the poverty of new urban environments

'It is not that Americans were anti-urban but that the cities they sought and imagined were different. Very simply, their houses were their cities, which accounts for much of what is right and wrong today in 'contemporary urbanism'.'

Alex Krieger, Professor of Urban Design at Harvard Graduate School of Design, on the other hand deconstructs the record of New Urbanists accusing them of creating more sub-divisions than towns, and increasingly relying on private management of communities, low densities, demographically homogenous enclaves, better designed sprawl inextricably linked to marketing strategies that evoke a rose-tinted view of the world and the perpetuation of the suburban myth. He suggests that the time is right to bring some of the ideals of New Urbanism into the urban environment.

This intellectual aperitif at the beginning of the book then gives way to the clubby atmosphere of the 'crit' where eight projects are presented and chatted through on the leather Chesterfields of New Urbanism principles. This section is well illustrated --though with nostalgic overtones - and reinforces the idea that New Urbanism is more comfortable with the art of suburban design than the grittiness of hard-core urbanism. It is left to Donlyn Lyndon to bring on the 'apple-pie' when he sums up the role of t he CNU. It is to help set up conditions in which other people from the development world can do better work. A bit of a cop-out. I prefer Jaquelin Robertson's pessimistic take:

'Indeed I fear that Western urbanism will in retrospect be our empire's most toxic and destructive export giving the entire work a built character that is inefficient, unpleasant, unjust and depressingly ugly. Our new cities are not worth copying our joint challenge is whether we in the West will be able to produce liveable and memorable cities in the coming century.'

The book exposes the weakness of the New Urbanists' ideas in tackling the real urbanism. There is still a lot of work to do to transduce these ideas to the city centres - and the suspicion is that we will end up with a reworking of 'Responsive Environments'. So as the idea of a new manifesto on urbanism starts to take shape in this country - there is something we all need to attend to.

(This review was first published in Urban Design Quarterly 87, Summer 2003 and is reproduced with the Editor's kind permission)