Prince of Wales (1989), Krier (1979) are all
expressions of revisionist (traditional) styles:
narrow streets, often with rear lane garaging,
picket fences, meandering footpaths, tall
windows, front porches, tiny front yards,
tiled roofs, pastel-toned exteriors, and local
pocket-parks – that sort of mix. The layouts
are compact and well designed: not exclu-
sionary, although there is an exclusiveness
based on price. They are an elegant riposte
to the failings of post-World War II suburbanism, and a pleasure to visit, provid-
ing networks of footpaths and narrow streets enticing car owners to park and
walk, and for many breadwinners to work from home.
There exists, in settler societies, a notion of the countryside as ‘good, clean,
worthy’ with the city as ‘bad, dirty, corrupt’. This parody shakes down further to
the within-city belief of ‘safety in the home’ and ‘danger on the streets’, the actu-
ality being all too often a cruel reverse – fear, claustrophobia and intimidation at
home, and freedom of expression and individualism out on the streets, albeit at
the right time!^16 Security within an enduring sense of place is allin public domain
provisioning. Local neighbourhood pride, satisfaction about the home as an
adjunct to the school and workplace, sociability as a matter of community iden-
tity, retention and restoration of residual wildlife and flora, and compatible
mixtures of activities – these ‘five worthies’ are urban outcomes to seek out and
design. They cannot, and will not, just happen. Market forces, unfettered, will not
produce them. They have to be nurtured.^17
Planners, developers, bureaucrats are the ‘jobbers’ with the organizational
ability and some of the design skills to fulfil this task – also ensuring that ‘form,
focus, legibility, security, connectability, permeability, personality, security’ and so
on are put in place along the lines detailed as Urban Social Design principles
in the upcoming box 5.1. Although these precepts, in and of themselves, cannot
produce urban functionality as an instant mix, they are the proven basic ingredi-
ents. It takes time, as much as or more than a lifetime, to achieve demographic
variety, a mixture of occupational and income classes, and racial heterogeneity for
middle Anglo settler society. This identifies the importance of fashioning worthy
places of residence, and aiding individuals and encouraging families grappling
with job insecurity and adverse personal misfortunes to build and maintain their
community scaffold.
Urban Reforms: Options and Actions
The eight sections which follow examine operational urban situations, the inten-
tion being to fashion recommendations for improving upon the general economic
substance, the social wellbeing and the urban environments which comprise com-
munity living places.
Urban Growth Management 203Seaside, Florida. The best known of the new-
urbanism projects, used as the outside set for filming
The Truman Story.