New urbanists, Academy search for common ground

More than 250 planning and design , educators, and public policy makers gathered in February for the conference “Urbanisms: New and Other.” Hosted by the University of California at Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design, the conference was distinguished by a cordial tone and a spirit of collaboration and creative brainstorming quite unlike last year’s contentious meeting at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design (see May/June 1999 issue). The Berkeley conference is the third in a series of summit meetings of the CNU and the Academy to seek common ground in principles of urbanism. Commentaries by all the founding members of CNU were balanced by the presentations by leading academicians and other prominent urbanists, such as Rob Krier and John Ruble, who are involved in the restoration of Berlin, Germany. The presenters and other participants stressed the need for all varieties of urbanists to develop a common vocabulary and a set of principles that can guide new city-building initiatives. Nan Ellin, an assistant professor of architecture at Arizona State University, noted that in the effort to address the social and environmental costs of sprawl, the CNU charter tells us what we need to do, while Duany Plater-Zyberk’s Lexicon of the New Urbanism tells us how we need to do it. Doug Kelbaugh, dean at the University of Michigan’s School of Architecture and Planning said the New Urbanism is about “a compact, walkable city with a hierarchy of public and private architecture and spaces that are conducive to face-to-face interaction, including background housing and gardens, and foreground civic and institutional buildings, squares, and parks.” This view was accepted by many, but not all attendees. The dialogue will continue in 2001 at a conference to be hosted by the University of Michigan’s School of Architecture and Planning.