Sustainable Urban Planning

its inhabitants – focus, legibility, personality, security and sense of place as an

alternative to single-use residential patterns.

Two interventions in the formulaic process which make up what is now the

suburban inheritance – neither of which I endorse – are the exclusionary ‘walled

and gated’ suburban enclave, and the imported ‘mock historical’ styles of tract,

although the latter, often styled as ‘theming’, does no social harm. Both are admis-

sions of inadequacy arising out of new money and insecurity, explored in Phillip

Langdon’sBetter Place to Live(1995). A trading on fear emanates from gated

suburbs, a notably North American phenomenon now common in Australia, and

a phoney elegance wafts from revisited urban traditionalism. An evenly reasoned

yet emphatic opinion from Peter Rowe on the matter of walled and gated enclaves

(1991) puts the view that:

they should be of concern. On the face of it there is nothing wrong

with similar people congregating together in a spirit of goodwill

and common interest; in large part it is what neighbourhoods

seem to be about. There is, however, a problem when they band

together at the punitive exclusion of others. Less obviously,

perhaps, there is the further question as to whether it is actually

in the best interest of like minded citizens themselves to choose

to reside together at the exclusion of other members of society.

On occasion both these abominations (exclusionary-gated and

mock-traditional) are put together as a combination – mock-traditional behind

walls and gates. Maybe these arrangements, and the kinds of people who occupy

them, simply deserve each other.^15

More functional and socially acceptable are the traditional ‘neighbourhood’

themed, traffic-calmed, medium-density and usually entry-monumented new-

urbanist projects. Duany (in Krieger 1992; and in Duany, Plater-Zyberk, Speck,

Suburban Nation, 2000), Calthorpe (1995), Langdon (1995), Barnett (1995), Charles

202 Practice

Figure 5.2 Urban morphologies.

European, Asian, African: different scales, perfect community creations contravening the planning

laws of Anglo setter societies?

LOCAL OBJECTIVES

Neighbourhood pride.

School and workplace

satisfaction.

Community identity.

Flora and wildlife

restoration.

Compatibly mixed

activities.