Friday, February 3, 2012
ZONING !
I think that I am more anti-zoning than pro-zoning, but I recognize that it is necessary evil. Think of places that grew-up without zoning. Not large metropoli like Houston, but smaller scale places. I live in West Campus; this place didn't evolve without zoning, but in recent years the zoning has been changed and loosened to allow for larger and taller buildings to be built. If you stand on the northeast corner of 22nd and Rio Grande and look northwest you see a few neat old houses in the foreground, and then 10 story tall apartments and garages in the background. West Campus is a really eclectic and interesting place I think. I don't really like the student population who lives there getting drunk and trashing the place every weekend, but I do like the fabric. Now back to my earlier thought. Think of a pioneer town in the 1800's or something; they didn't have a city plan or anything like that, they just picked a spot based on the water or the railroad and started building. They chose a main street and built what they needed and as they got bigger the built out from there. People lived out on farms, which might be equivalent to a suburb in my example, and some lived in town, but if anyone needed to conduct any kind of business they came into town, which is still somewhat true today. I think that places like that the grew out of necessity have a more organic and human quality to them, not like large planned areas of commercial strips and residential blocks, or even worse, forced mixed use developments like the Triangle - that place is awful... Another example of unplanned and nice places could maybe the UT campus? Actually, I am sure they have and had a very specific campus plan, but the University did expand from its original 40 acres as it needed, and over time the repositioning of different types and buildings and departments and the variety in style and old, medium, and new buildings creates a very eclectic and organic environment, in my eyes. So, I think planning ruins the character of places and makes them boring and contrived. I do think that now that the population has grown so large and the cities are growing so quickly that some planing and zoning guidelines are needed, but if it were up to me I would be very conservative in my application of these things and try to do them in a way to allow or at least emulate the organic and human growth that I am so fond of.
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Great post! Some food for thought...
ReplyDeleteActually, city planning has been around since the Romans!
Why do you think the city center held all the business? What has changed that?
I wish I could remember an article I read regarding planning at the university-scale; if you are interested I bet btw Lynn, Andrea and I we could find it.
Why is the Triangle awful? What do you think it represents?
Do you think the variety of building type (new, old etc) is thanks to no planning or zoning regulations? What makes you think that? In examples I am thinking of it is quite the opposite...it is much cheaper to tear down an old building and build a new one. Cities like Charleston, SC that have strict codes about building might frustrate developers or prove expensive to buyers but that is how they have preserved the character so many other cities lack!
Does planning make places boring and contrived? What kind of planning are you describing? Are you comfortable making such a sweeping statement? I think through the readings and lectures in this class you could end up with a very different view on planning!
Thinking about the Triangle or even worse the Domain, which can't even pretend to be a part of the city fabric as far away as it is, how do you feel about them compared to suburbia? Are these types of places really worse than building the same amount of housing at a much lower density, while encouraging the use of cars? Are there other solutions that would be better than both of the current ones?
ReplyDeleteI think the Domain is a slightly different example. It is on the outskirts, almost so far it could really start to be its own little fake city. It is so large, with lots of stores and restaurants and amenities and apartments. They eve have a hotel and are going to build a Whole Foods up there, so people that live there could potentially live their day to day lives in the little world of the Domain. I think the Domain is really going to be a new node for future growth and development. I guess you could call it sprawl, but I'm not so sure it's bad, and it's not something I was complaining about in my original blog post. I am not sure how to describe it, but I like the domain better than other mixed-use developments... I think it has a different character and a different sort of potential.
ReplyDeleteIt's the fact that these developments come from single developers simply trying to maximize the units they can put on the market. Ironically if developers had much smaller parcels of land and weren't allowed to make the massive constructions there would start to be a real dialog happening between all these buildings. People would reference but not copy the same scheme over and over again as it is happening now with these large developments.
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