Redevelopment Decision Making: Why Design Focus = Bad Design

The point of this blog is the problem with focusing too much on design. I'm of the opinion that we have been doing this in the United States for a good hundred years now and it has always been the case for urban planning in a more general sense. But one thing I don't want to imply is that there is no connection at all. It is certainly true that a well planned city can be greatly enhanced by good design. But design is irrelevant to a poorly planned city and a beautiful design cannot make up for bad planning. So what do I mean by planning, if not design? Real city planning is policy, almost exclusively. Policy does have a geographic element, of course, but layout and aesthetics are tertiary concerns at best. In short, even the best design can't really work unless it's adjunct to a well functioning, economically and socially healthy city.

That's where we go badly off the rails in the planning profession. Almost everything that's done in planning is focused on design, if not composed entirely of design. What do we end up with? At best, we have cities that look great, but are strangely empty. At worst we end up with cities that neither work well nor look very good. That seems to usually be what happens. 

And the reason should be evident. Cities don't work in two block segments. Cities must be integrated enough that neighborhoods work as a unit and, if possible, neighborhoods should be networked together as well. When new things are added the primary concern should be how they will work within the system as it already functions. If individual elements are added piecemeal this is usually the primary consideration. Housing would be added in an area with a high potential for housing sales and a car park would be added to an area that wasn't already overflowing with parking spaces. If lots are developed individually it isn't hard to keep the main focus on the area's function and allow the design to take its position as a tertiary concern. 

Then come big developments. The big malls. They can be downtown malls with office towers included or suburban malls with all the standard cineplexes and department stores, but they tend to have one thing in common: they fail to integrate with their surrounding areas. The reason for this is that they aren't intended to do so. They're designed to attract people from all around the metro areas and beyond. The people who finance, design, and build them could care less about their urban functioning because they have another purpose, which is why design takes the front seat. But the problem is that when these places have exhausted their primary purpose, they end up being a useless eyesore that either gets abandoned, has to be re-purposed, or demolished. 

They create a 'hole' in the urban fabric that damages, not enhances, the neighborhood that they're in. Almost without fail, mega developments do not match the neighborhoods that they're in. To be certain, this does not doom every mega project to failure. Some mega projects are necessary and some are beneficial. But by their very nature, they don't integrate into the surrounding area, which means they don't function very well as a part of the city. They may very well serve their intended purpose, unless that purpose is to blend into the surrounding city. They can't because they simply work at cross purposes. Their function will always be opposed to the city's function.

And that is where the design fails. Design is a combination of form and function. When a design fails to function properly, it's a bad design. It may look perfectly delightful, but when it doesn't function properly, it's bad design. When designers seek to make a project beautiful, more power to them. I like beauty as much as the next guy, but when their concern is how the project functions internally, without consideration for the surrounding environment, their project is doomed to failure, at least from the city's point of view.

I do realize that these sorts of projects will never disappear entirely, and they probably shouldn't, but we should consider the implications for the surrounding neighborhood every time we hear that a mega mall has been proposed in the middle of the city. Or a convention center is planned for downtown. These sorts of projects bring as many problems as they bring benefits and the tendency of city officials to praise the projects and even spend taxpayer dollars to attract these projects should be reconsidered strongly. As a rule of thumb, if the neighborhood residents collectively reject the project, it probably isn't good for the neighborhood. Projects that flatten the neighborhood and replace it with something else aren't exactly an 'improvement'. 

What we think we want

What do we want out of life? Americans will often tell you that what they want is a home in the suburbs with two cars in the driveway. (The spouse and kids are not relevant subject matter here.) Eighty percent of Americans would prefer to live in a single family home, according to builderonline.com. It's possible that builderonline is a bit biased, though. Furthermore, I would suggest that many Americans are being convinced to buy something that they didn't really want in the first place. That, of course, is the whole point of marketing and the suburban, 'single family home/two cars (or more) in the driveway' lifestyle has been marketed to the American public ad infinitum. It's everywhere you turn in popular media, from sit-coms to commercials. And the social norm in the United States is definitely that everyone will want and pursue this lifestyle.

A few of us buck the trend, but we pay the price. From shitty mass transit and development laws that make traditional urban structure nearly impossible in most cities, living a normal life without adhering to the prescribed lifestyle can be a hassle. Furthermore, those who decide to live in multifamily units and reject the multi-car ethic are made to subsidize the lifestyles of the majority, not only because we pay the same taxes and get vastly differing levels of service, but also because buying a home provides a tax break that renters never get ( though condos and townhouses do provide the tax benefit) and even though drivers pay taxes and fees that others don't, the money collected comes nowhere near the monetary cost of meeting the demands of the driving public, much less the total cost to society, which includes things like pollution and resource depletion.

Considering these things, I am forced to wonder about the 80% statistic touted by builderonline and undoubtedly reiterated by the industry as a whole. How deep does a survey go in probing the desires of the American public? Do Americans actually want the lifestyle associated with that single family home, or are they simply responding to an entire century of marketing and social pressure as well as the financial benefits of being part of the home ownership system?

I think the answer is in where we spend our leisure time. On those occasions where we can pull ourselves out of normal, everyday life and we get to choose where we are and how we live for just a few minutes or a few days, where we choose to go is very telling. Specifically, I think the places where we shop and where we vacation are excellent indicators of the environments we actually like to be in. You may find this argument to be a stretch, since the examples I give are wholly part of the suburban, low density lifestyle. But that's my point. Within that suburban lifestyle, constant efforts are made to emulate a normal urban structure. One that works and is comfortable for the patrons. And the ones that do it well are able to charge a premium for the experience, which I think indicates that it's in high demand.