Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

internetworkers - Re: [internetworkers] New Urbanism

internetworkers AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Michael Winslow Czeiszperger <michael AT czeiszperger.org>
  • To: internetworkers AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [internetworkers] New Urbanism
  • Date: Tue, 7 Jan 2003 09:35:39 -0500

I've combined several responses into one so as to not flood the list with posts, making this thread easy to avoid:

On Monday, January 6, 2003, at 10:48 PM, Kristen James Eberlein wrote:
Southern Village sounds nice. But I need to toot the horn for my
neighborhood: Old North Durham.


Yup, New Urbanism is modeled after pre-WWII neighborhoods which are almost always better than the new versions.

On Tuesday, January 7, 2003, at 01:40 AM, Thomas C. Meggs wrote:
Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the growth rate for sprawl development far outstrips the growth rate for development that harnesses the ideals of New Urbanism. To some extent, New Urbanism in the United States is really only available to people with (relatively) a lot of wealth. There are bigger problems at play to make it happen. New Urbanism has to be (1) economically feasible and (2) pushed along with a new mind set. The fact of the matter is that only more intellectual people of a certain mind set are going to seek out these communities and pay a little bit more to live in them, for they are the only ones who see the value in it.


New Urbanism is intended to be available to citizens in a wide range of incomes. The problem at this point is simple supply and demand-- there are much fewer older neighborhoods or new neighborhoods that follow these design principles available that the prices are higher than normal. In some ways this is necessary at this point in order to attract more builders to using this model, although its an uphill battle since almost all building codes now actually prohibit building using New Urbanism principles. There's lots of examples in the book I mentioned.

At this point there are two main ways that I know of for providing this type of living environment. The first is to move into an older neighborhood that hasn't been gentrified, and put up with the higher crime levels that usually accompany such areas until it gets cleaned up. The second is new development projects use the size of the living spaces to create a range of prices. In Southern Village the living sizes range from around 1400 square feet to 3000+, in everything from apartments to condos to townhouses to a variety of house sizes. The cheapest unit I know of right now is around $118K for a one-bedroom condo, which while not cheap, is on the low side if you look at the stuff for sale in Carrboro or Chapel Hill.

Chapel Hill/Carrboro's new building codes are requiring that new developments have at least 25% of the units be under 1500 square feet, which will increase the housing stock available in the lower price ranges, and thus help alleviate the price pressures at that range of the market. While its a far cry from affordable housing for people making minimum wage, its a reasonable alternative to government sponsored housing.

___________________________________________________________________
Ending a sentence with a preposition is nothing to be ashamed of.
-- michael at czeiszperger dot org, Chapel Hill, NC






Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page