Typologies and studies of classroom questions

At Greenwich Peninsula, next to the troubled dome which signified the turn of the millennium in London, English Partnerships, an urban regeneration agency, is developing a new residential area called Millennium Village. The project’s overall aim is ‘to create a secure, high quality modern community with the traditional values of village life’. The masterplan is designed by the architect Ralph Erskine and ‘aims to establish a sense of community through the balanced design of buildings and public spaces, the integration of public transport and pedestrian movement and the creation of a varied urban texture that accommodates different uses and activities over a long period of time’ (English Partnerships, 1998:2). This is a significant project and will transform an important site at the heart of a major world city. There is little doubt that it would develop some

high-quality residential space. But, we may wonder, how is it possible and why is it desirable to create a community? We may be sceptical of this choice of words as simply some sort of publicity, drawing upon a nostalgic and cosy image of village life for selling the development. But even if it is just advertising, why is it employing the notion of community and not something else, for example the quality of individual units in the scheme, as is the case with many developers? What is the significance of public space, which is specifically mentioned here? What is its role in the creation of community, as envisaged by the scheme? Why can a sense of community be created partly through the balance between buildings and public spaces?

Many generations before us have been involved in planning, developing and criticizing urban neighbourhoods. Creating urban neighbourhoods was once the focal point of urban design and planning, but it faded into the background as severe criticisms were waged against its social claims, which included creating communities. Despite these criticisms, the quest for promoting communities is with us once again, from social and political debates around communitarianism to a variety of design proposals for sustainable urban neighbourhoods. This trend, which could be called micro-urbanism (Madanipour, 1996), promotes the design and development of small-scale, distinctive neighbourhoods and settlements, recreating a small version of a city. Public space, it appears, plays a major role in the vision of micro-urbanists, as it is imagined to have done so in the small settlements and urban neighbourhoods of the past (Figure 5.1). Simultaneously, the establishment of an identifiable part of urban fabric as a neighbourhood appears to be a desire to extend the private intimate space beyond the home.

The question of how to deal with the emotive and controversial notion of community is very complex. Nevertheless, as urban planners and designers are engaged in the shaping of cities, they cannot avoid coming to a clear view about the social significance of urban neighbourhoods and communities. The social scientists who are interested in the re-emergence of the notion of community building may also benefit from an examination of the way urban design approaches the subject. This chapter discusses the notion of design and planning of neighbourhoods through examining the current trend, its historic predecessors, some of the broad contexts in which it is embedded, and the role of public space design and provision in neighbourhood planning. The main questions here are:

Why is planning by neighbourhoods promoted? Why does the notion of promoting communities, through social change and spatial transformation, keep coming back to the agenda of those who are engaged in understanding, shaping, and managing cities and urban societies? What are the political, economic, social and environmental parameters that lie at the foundation of such return? What is the role of public space in this agenda?

What are the characteristics of public spaces that are so centrally embedded in these neighbourhoods? Does the creation of neighbourhoods help in extending the private realm or enhancing the public sphere? What is the role of neighbourhood in the relationship between the home and the city, between the private and the public?

The Millennium Village is not the only example of its kind. The term urban vlllage is now widely used in many contexts. Even some existing parts of cities, such as Fitzrovia in London, tend to reinvent themselves as urban villages. We see this promotion of urban neighbourhoods in Britain by the Urban Villages Forum, which brings together many

5.1 Small towns and their public spaces representing (and helping to create) a coherent social and physical structure have been idealized by micro-urbanists (Coimbra, Portugal)

housebuilders, developers, funders, planners and designers, and works on around 35 projects with the English Partnerships. In response to the ‘bland and monotonous developments of recent years’ and rather than ‘single use and single tenure estates’, their aim is ‘to create mixed use urban developments on a sustainable scale’. The qualities of the urban villages are spelled out as offering: ‘A variety of uses, such as shopping, leisure and community facilities alongside housing; a choice of tenures, both residential and commercial; a density of development which can help encourage the use of non-housing activities; a strong sense of place, with basic amenities within easy walking distance of all residents; a high level of involvement by local residents in the planning and onward management of the new development’ (Urban Villages Forum, 1998). Almost all these principles can be traced in the Urban Task Force report (1999), which is a landmark document in the debates about the future shape of British cities. It recommends the creation of ‘a hierarchy of public spaces that relate to buildings and their entrances, to encourage a sense of safety and community’ (Urban Task Force, 1999:71).

A parallel trend in the United States, called New Urbanism, has emerged in response to the suburban sprawl which characterizes the main form of American urban development and whose costs are no longer sustainable: ‘the creeping deterioration of once proud neighbourhoods, the increasing alienation of large segments of society, a constantly

rising crime rate and widespread environmental degradation’ (Katz, 1994: ix). Suburbs have failed for they have lacked the ‘fundamental qualities of real towns: pedestrian scale, an identifiable centre and edge, integrated diversity of use and population and defined public space’. To confront the problems of cities today, these ‘town-like principles’ should be applied to cities and regions alike (Calthorpe, 1994: xv). While suburbia is formed by ‘pods, highways and interstitial space’, cities and towns are composed of ‘neighbourhoods and districts, organized by corridors of transportation or open space’. An ideal neighbourhood is therefore so designed as to have a centre and an edge, an optimal size of a quarter mile from centre to edge, a mixture of activities, a network of streets, and a careful attention to the public space and the location of civic buildings (Duany and Plater-Zyberk, 1994:xvii). If the urban villages are villages in the middle of large cities, New Urbanist developments, whether called Traditional Neighbourhood Development or Transit Oriented Development (Katz, 1994) are small, new towns in the middle of sprawling suburbs. Both ideas favour the creation of distinctive, small-scale developments in the middle of a sea of apparently undifferentiated urban space. A similar development in Australia introduces Liveable Neighbourhoods that are sustainable and foster a sense of community (State of Western Australia, 1997).

Another, closely related trend in Britain is the development of new settlements, which draws upon the garden city and new towns experience. In the 1980s, there were nearly 200 proposals for new settlements in England. These were small, free-standing settlements of between 300 and 4,500 houses for development by the private sector. The government appears to have generally discouraged these developments as they are not self-contained or well-served by public transport (DoE, 1996). They are, however, favoured by some as an alternative form of development, which can be used for accommodating the large number of new dwellings needed in the next two decades. What is asked for in the new settlements is the development of a sense of community through a mixture of house types and tenures, a distinct physical boundary, a minimum viable size to support a primary school, and some employment opportunities (Breheny et al., 1993:25–6).

Finding measures to promote communities is not confined to the urban planning and design circles. It can be found in social and political debates. For example, Amitai Etzioni (1995), who promotes a communitarian agenda, discusses the need for making the physical environment more community friendly. Therefore, what he asks for is the need to design the places we use, from our homes to the entire cities, so as to enhance the communitarian nexus. At small scales, his suggestion is to ‘provide people shared space to mingle’, as exemplified in seats, sandboxes, playgrounds, laundries and sport facilities.

The public spaces at the neighbourhood level, therefore, are expected to provide the opportunity for social interaction and hence the creation of a sense of community. This should be supplemented with measures at larger scales where he asks to ‘plan developments in ways that enhance rather than hinder the sociological mix that sustains a community’ (pp. 127–8).

These different formulations, among others, appear to amount to a trend, one that promotes micro-urbanism: small-scale urban environments that can generate a sense of togetherness in the midst of threats of ecological degradation, social fragmentation and

spatial segregation. But, we may wonder, have we not heard about the need for creating neighbourhoods and communities before? Is it a new initiative or has it been tested before?