Can we measure community?

In January, CNU and the Seaside Institute hosted a groundbreaking academic conference in Seaside, Florida. It marked the first time that a multi-disciplinary group of social researchers and practitioners gathered expressly to discuss the issues raised by new urbanists, and to evaluate whether the New Urbanism is achieving its goals. The challenges of defining new urbanist development and then quantifying how well it succeeds were central topics at The New Urbanism: Is Design a Catalyst for Community? According to several speakers, quantifying how our designs actually affect people’s lives is challenging. Researchers like quantitative results, while a sense of community is qualitative. Even developing a unified definition of community can be more elusive than defining a “pure” TND, so connecting community and place is rarely a straightforward, scientific exercise. Similarly, it is hard to determine how well actual projects contribute to environmental, economic, and social goals. Architect and University of Miami Dean Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk maintained that new urbanist communities must seek to achieve three goals: environmental sustainability, economic success, and social integration. Encouraging social integration, she said, is just as important as the others, and data gathered in this area can be effective in changing opinions. Plater-Zyberk proposed that a good test of social integration is to ask how a place works for kids. While Joongsub Kim has gathered some good information in Kentlands, and other researchers have gotten data from Harbor Town, information is still scarce. For example, Ray Gindroz revealed that while he often recommends a certain height for a fence to create a safe street, no scientific evidence backs up his advice. University of California psychologist Robert Sommer encouraged new urbanist professionals to monitor and document their efforts and achievements using resident surveys, journals, statistics on civic participation, and environmental improvements. The relationship between design and community may be hard to quantify. But when Diane Dorney and Jacquelyne Grimshaw talked about their communities of Kentlands and Chicago, their love for these places was evident in their eyes and voices. This, in the end, may be the basis on which communities really succeed or fail.