Great post Maxants. I will endeavour to learn more about New Urbanism...
Old School Vs New School
Just setting up this thread to continue the discussion started on the SPS2 thread. Ukad1979's response to my post requires a lengthy reply
hno:.- I'm really against the writing off of old town planning as styles as being merely 'slums'.
I'm very much into New Urbanism - which is not new at all, its an urbanist movement that seeks to revive old styles of town planning - not for purely aesthetic reasons, but rather functional ones.
I really detest modernist town planning and its key progenitor - Le Corbusier. His book 'The Athens Charter' was used by architects like Abercrombie and Robert Bruce to justify demolition of huge swathes of the UK.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athens_Charter
This manifested in city scapes such as this one:
The athens charter was simply a dream on paper. It had no evidence to support its assertions (which were mighty; this new style would liberate our minds!).
To me this is crazy - the fact that people acted on Corbusier's assertion without prior research onto its effects. An interesting parallel could be early psychiatry. Like Corbusier, Freud make sweeping assertions about human nature, which people acted on despite the lack of evidence. Early psychiatric care was hell and its basis quite erroneous. The same can be said for modernist town planning.
As I think I've mentioned before, I work in healthcare. In modern healthcare you do not do anything unless evidence exists to prove it works. Modern healthcare has a spine of research which supports and justifies everything you do.
Like modern healthcare - old town planning has developed an evidence base. The Congress for New Urbanism (CNU) is non-profit research organisation who work with several universities around the world to illuminate exactly how town planning effects us. Its multi disciplinary; architects, public health experts, epidemiologists, traffic engineers, historians, sociologists, psychologists all work together to elucidate the secrets of good town planning. Compare that to Le Corbusier, sitting alone on his yacht, dreaming of concrete.
Overwhelmingly, the old styles - subject to years of evolution rather than a 'de-novo' birth like modern planning - have enormous advantages over new styles (health, community, sustainability, safety ect)
I think the reason old neighborhoods are still labeled as 'slums' by some folk stem from the context of the period rather than anything intrinsic to the planning style.
Overcrowding stemmed from high childhood mortality rates and a lack of family planning infrastructure.
High rates of disease stemmed from the fact that antibiotic use and vaccinations did not yet exist and the few that did were not yet delivered on a public health scale (feeding into high childhood mortality).
Pollution in part stemmed from the dependency of open fires in every household and nature of industry at the time. Obviously, pollution has not gone away, we've exchanged our chimneys for the more socially acceptable car exhaust: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-s...y-by-six-months-for-every-briton-9251260.html
Unemployment is key factor.
These things will turn any area into a slum, regardless of planning style.
Basically, anything that affects us profoundly should be subject to prior research. Its been the case with healthcare for a long time. As architect Jan Gehl said at last years RIBA conference - why has urbanism and architecture not caught up?
I always cringe when I read about the 'research' performed by modern architects - its a distortion of the word, a series of drawings endlessly analyzing form? That's not research. Architects should be taking on sociological and anthropological analysis of their work, how does their work impact on people? Two of the worst parks in the city - both intrinsically modernist - Piccadilly gardens, and Ian Simpson's park in Hulm - both disregarding people in favor of aesthetics, form, blah blah blah... Had they consulted with other professions, perhaps these parks could have been something great.
IN SUMMARY: Old neighborhood styles are not intrinsically slums. If that were so York would the arsehole of England. Old school town planning now has an evidence base which indicates it is superior to modern approaches.
If your interested in Urbanism and how delicate a science it is (and how heavy handed modernists are) - check out this lecture by Jan Gehl:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KL_RYm8zs28
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P.S - I don't hate modern architecture! I just wish it wasn't such an arrogant school, the past has so much to teach us!!!
Extra P.S -
JAN GEHL VS NORMAN FOSTER: HOW TO MAKE A HABITABLE CITY
http://www.architectural-review.com...-how-to-make-a-habitable-city/8658073.article
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To quote the post that triggered this thread; this looks like it would be a welcome new (old) kind of feature. New builds are usually glass, rarely stone and if brick is used it's a modern brick style usually accompanied with some poor grey panelling like on many city centre apartment buildings.Demolish it and rebuild Withy Grove! Something unique that no other city has....
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There's a little example of this (kind of) walk through/under just behind St Anne's Church as you walk though to King Street. I think there's a glasses shop, a Barbour and an Hermès there. I think it works and would be really interesting on a grander scale.
I don't particularly like Arcades, like Leeds has, they're okay. We have the Barton Arcade but I usually enter/leave Ran around the back as I've walked up Police Street to get there, and I don't walk through the Arcade. I don't like indoor shopping like the Trafford Centre or the Arndale neither. Why I like Manchester city centre so much is because you can be outside a lot of the time. I like being outside, I like fresh air and seeing the outside of interesting buildings this sort of thing that I have quoted would be that sort of thing. I prefer that rather than shopping indoors.
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