Do any anons know of any interesting books or research critiquing modern urban planning and stuff like New Urbanism? There's a lot of professional and industry writing on the topic, and you can find all sort of publications from different local governments, but most of this material focus on the practical or logistical aspects of engineering or public policy as the relate to urban planning. I haven't been able to find much in the way of more philosophically, aesthetically, or socially oriented critiques of modern urban planning.
Almost all of the literature presents New Urbanism in a positive light, and tends to focus on issue of engineering and public policy. However, I think there a lot of different ways to critique New Urbanism as a sort of market-driven neoliberal enterprise. I've been thinking about this topic more and more, and I'd really like to see if there are any scholars with anything interesting to say.
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Is housing le bad now or something?
Are densely packed rectangles the only form of housing now? That seems to be the question
Pic related is still far prettier and its scale far more humane than your classic commie block.
But all of that is completely secondary to the problem of community. Regardless of whether you live in a sprawling American McMansion suburb, a row house in the UK, OP's pic related or some dystopian commie block they're all terrible if community has disintegrated, the social capital has vanished, you have no real relationships with your neighbours or emotional investment in the people and the land around you.
Housing, like almost anything else, can be executed well or poorly. If you think that's a controversial claim, then you probably have a very simplistic worldview and value system. We might disagree about what constitutes good or bad design, but any reasonable person should be able to recognize that things can be designed poorly or they can be designed well, at least relative to one's own criteria. In most cases, housing development is probably executed poorly, owing to a range of different political, social, and economic variables. 20th century driving-oriented suburban development and 21st century high-density Ikea-core New Urbanism are two pretty good examples of how development can be executed poorly. You may disagree with those example, but hopefully you can think instances of architecture or urban planning that you appreciate, and examples that you think are less well executed, whether that be on practical or aesthetic grounds. If you don't have any sort beliefs, values, or opinions of that nature, then you are unironically a mindless npc incapable of full experiential engagement with the external world.
I have a question about the image you posted. What do the street-level floors contain? Stores? If that's the case, I think it is a pretty decent apartment style for a city, at least better than others.
Yes, generally they have shops on the bottom. It's a mixed use development. There are certainly attractive features of New Urbanism - it wouldn't appeal to people if there weren't - but there are also major problems that are worth critiquing. The type of building in that picture is called a 5-over-1. These are cheaply made "luxury apartments" that are not built to last. They're generally made with large quantities of synthetic construction materials like fiber cement and Hardie Plank that are often more harmful to the environment and less durable that traditional building materials. These buildings are also generally constructed in a simplistic, sleak, utilitarian manner that often fails to respect the design, landscape, and architecture of the surrounding environment. They generally have a cheap, mass produced Ikea-tier design style that incorporates bright neon colors and a minimalist facade. It has very sterile, synthetic appearance, and this apartment style is pretty much the norm in all new urban developments in the US, especially on the West Coast.
>Le twitter contrarian elitist aesthete
If you want to say le walkable cities bad becuz leftists say walkable cities good or walkable cities bad becuz niggurs that's fine but this isn't the board for it
One must return to the medieval city!
You're the same type of person who used to sperg out when people criticize soulless post-war suburbs.
I'm not against walkable cities. I love walkable cities. I'm against zoning deregulation and the lassaiz-faire, free market development policies that are considered core feature of New Urbanism. I'm also against some of the architectural and traffic design principles and building materials employed by New Urbanist developers since they're often less sustainable and environmentally friendly than more expensive alternative. I could get into some of the details of these critique, if you'd like, but I'm certainly not against walkable cities. That is one of my core development goals, but wall ability is something that most planners are interested in. Walkability is not in any way unique to New Urbanism.
>zoning deregulation and free market are the core of New Urbanism
New Urbanists like to think they're some sort of flavor of libertarian, but they're the opposite of that.
Why many new urbanist are so strongly associated with right wing covert groups? Like the few that exist in Latin America are close to things like opus dei and similar Catholic groups. Do you have info on that?
Randall O'Toole has some good insight and research on it. Romance of the Rails is a good start.
Check out order without design. Its about markets influence on cities
Mohammed Atta's thesis
It’s not available for the public but you can go for Jarrett Kobeks book on this matter
Look up smart cities.
Wrathofgnon has been posting articles/books about this on twitter for years. i might actually make an account in order to see a chronological view of his tweets. https://twitter.com/wrathofgnon
You're probably looking for something like this. Also look into Strong Towns generally, see if any of their other books interest you
https://ti.org/antiplanner/?page_id=16274
Most of John Ruskin's lectures and critiques included within them apply still. In fact, they are more relevant than ever. A great read all around, even if you're not interested in architecture or urban planning.
Seeing Like a State, by James C Scott? not really sure exactly what you're after
Open Architecture by Esra Akcan
I would also recommend Developing Expertise: Architecture and Real Estate in Metropolitan America by Sara Stevens (Yale UP) for a critical review of new urbanism
Not wrong. I personally find him to be somewhat underwhelming (just finished the art of not being governed and previously read Against the Grain) but he does hit the right points
Timothy Mitchell has a chapter in Rule of Experts about modern development in Cairo that may scratch your itch, OP
And then actually another goated one I just thought of: The Architecture of Neoliberalism: How contemporary architecture Became an Instrument of Control and Compliance by Douglas Spencer absolutely fricks. Check out his bibliography for more on this path
If you really wanna go deep, check out Aldo Rossi's book "Architecture of the City"
>Neoliberalism
The Geography of Nowhere by James Howard Kunstler
learn how to internet search
we are not yer google beyotch
These buildings are high maintenance, so is other buildings. Being clean and pretty is one thing, how do they make these buildings pristine? Eventually the whole area would look like Soviet-era brutalist architecture if they don't maintain it.
This was a large part of Seeing Like A State, which was a rather nice book. The main focus of the book is how central authorities are fond of using their power to systematize reality such that it becomes more legible to bureaucracy - whether that's in urban planning, uniform land codes, nationwide curricula, etc. The author used the phrase 'internal colonization' to describe the process at one point, which stuck with me.