A new book on The Three Rules of Urban Design

Several days ago I surprised myself. I mentioned in passing to a friend that I was just about to order a new printing of City Comforts because the first printing (of the second edition) was sold out. The friend asked if I would ever write another book. For the past few years my stock answer to that question has always been — and it's a common question — "No. I am a one-book pony. I've said what I have to say in City Comforts."

So when I answered my friend with "Yes. I think I will take the 'Three Rules' chapter from City Comforts and expand it into a book of its own," I was far more surprised than she was.

But that is what I am planning to do. Expand and examine the 'Three Rules' in greater, even mind-numbingly greater, detail. And I ask for your help.

I would very much appreciate hearing every possible critique of the 'Three Rules.' Click here to download the chapter. Praise it if you like. But I am even more interested in hearing the reasons why I am full of it, why the 'Three Rules' is naive, incomplete, simple-minded and overall just plain wrong and/or misleading. Let me have it. Bring it on, in the words of our bumbling leader. Tell me in as much detail as you are able why I should drop this project immediately and not embarrass myself any further by my clueless rantings.

Truly excellent criticisms (in my sole judgment) will receive a copy of the new book. Criticisms so superb that they persuade me to change my mind and drop the project entirely will receive my undying gratitude and dinner at any restaurant you like (in Seattle) or elsewhere as our respective schedules might allow.

But amidst the levity I am in earnest and would appreciate hearing any criticisms, questions or any other help & hint.

•••

Btw, If you prefer to phrase your comment as a question, that's even better.

Also, I don't make the offer of dinner for persuading me to change my mind as a joke. Writing/photographing a new book will be a great deal of effort, even financial expenditure, over many months, maybe even a year or so. The world certainly doesn't need more books. And there is minimal payback in either money or love. So someone would be doing me a great favor by showing me the error of my ways.

Comments

[Eric Fischer]

The immediate question I have is: How is it possible to follow rule 1 (building to the sidewalk) without automatically following rule 3 (no front parking lot) as a side effect?

It it is possible, it would be good to have an illustration of what it means to build to the sidewalk while still having a parking lot in front.

[David Sucher]

Eric,
The short answer is that you can't; and that's kinda the point.

[Eric Fischer]

With regard to "One solution is to create a street wall of shops while allowing parking on the inside," I would warn against the failure of this design at the Trader Joe's/Bed Bath and Beyond/etc. at 9th and Bryant in San Francisco. The stores all have doors to the street, but these doors are all locked and only the doors leading from the parking lot are usable, killing the street. Please warn that courtyard parking will work only if the street remains the primary or only access.

[David Sucher]

Thanks, Eric.

I will have to clarify so get across the idea that parking on the first floor is ok but ONLY BEHIND a layer of some active use which enfronts the sidewalk and actually uses the sidewalk for access as well as visibility.

I'll have to get down to San Francisco to see this project you mention. Alas. The burden of researching a book on urban design.

[Holly B]

Consider adding some examples of urban design where all three of the rules are technically observed, yet utterly botched.

To my mind, the junkiest and most predictable botching of the permeable storefront rule is the chain grocery store, Safeway being a prime example, that designs display sized windows into its (parking lot oriented) facade then perenially blocks those windows with the backs of tall cabinets or video shelves.

[David Sucher]

Thanks, Holly.
Excellent idea now that i have the pages to stretch out.

[Stephen Rees]

I think the biggest hang up planners here have is the separation of land uses. I would like to see many more places that deliberately mix residential, commercial and retail activity in the same space.
That would allow for much more variations in streets. Go to cities that developed before the car, and before planning - or those where former industrial areas are being transformed into live/work spaces
and so on - and a whole new variety of solutions becomes apparent.

My planning "spirit guide" is Jane Jacobs and her work revealed what streets should be all about. People watching. It is not a space just to move through it is also a place to stop and spend time.

So if you "build to the sidewalk" where do people just sit? Where are the porches, patios, play areas? Where do the old men sit and play chess? Or the more active, boules? We need places in cities where people can go to see and be seen. Las Ramblas - the passeo. So much more civilised than "hangin' out at the mall" which is what my kids do. Another city planner of my acquaintance worked with street youth to create places where they could skateboard - since the architects who created the spaces they were using had not even considered that possibility.

If you mix in residential with the retail you can have some nice front yards on the street - gardens, planting, shade in the summer. So many cities have institutionalized eating outside - the dedicated restaurant patio - but ignored the need for informal eating - anything from picnics to grabbing a hot dog from a vendor. In Vancouver we have got so twitchy about health risks from street food that *only* hot dogs are permitted (which must be one of the least healthy foods on the planet)

Cities do not just need sidewalks (and usually they should be wider and allow for much more than "jostling") - they need large pedestrian areas - squares - in London many have gardens (too many of which are fenced and locked) - but we also need areas where people can congregate. Every great city in the Old World has such places.

I would like to see many more public car parks - civic amenities where the car can be left while he visit to town is accomplished on foot.

Cars can be allowed but must be made to feel they are only in town on sufferance. To the greatest extent possible they need to forced out to the edges of primarily pedestrian areas and never allowed to drive through. Town centres must not be thoroughfares or short cuts. Where cars get in they must be controlled by hard landscaping - no signs, no traffic control devices - force the drivers to make eye contact with other users of the space. Use parked cars as barriers where needed - but in general car free is better. I hate your idea of car parks next to shops. That way creates dead street frontages - and inevitable traffic conflicts as cars force their way across the sidewalk - or pedestrians have to cope with curbs
and gutters.

Design places for people in all their glorious variety and all their possible activities and inactivity - never for cars - one day soon we won't have them or need them and the 20th century will seem like a bad dream. Most of its built environment will be swept away and replaced by a more humane, sustainable environment where people can walk, or roll, or hang around. There is much more to life than shopping!

Some of this stuff gets dealt with in my blog (http://stephenrees.wordpress.com) but there are so many other people who have said this kind of thing so much better. Americans need to rediscover cities and urbanity and the cities that never had cars, or did not allow them to hold sway, show how it can be done.

The three rules are a good start - but that is all they are. They cannot, must not, be the last word.

[Dave Sucher]

Thanks very much for your thoughtful comments, Stephen. And 'yes,' I am speaking of commercial and mixed-use areas and not residential-only neighborhoods, much less single-family ones.

I will consider your critique carefully. But at first glance my thought is that I simply need to do a better job --and that's the purpose of the new book, of course -- in explaining the 3 Rules and how one would use them. While I agree with many things you say, they are not fatal to my perspective.

We'll have to agree to disagree, I suspect, but I think that the 3 Rules are the core of "cityness" and all else is epilogue. What I mean is that one can have a human-scaled, walkable commercial neighborhood without any other of the important factors you mention but one cannot have it without the 3 Rules. Conversely, if a neighborhood has the 3 Rules and _none_ of the other elements such as a public open space it _can_ be a great place. I believe that the 3 Rules are -- on a site-by-site basis -- the irreducible essence of "cityness." And btw I disagree with you totally on the issue of on-street parking, which I think is essential and beneficial in all but the most unusual circumstances of a mid-town Manhattan or a Michigan Avenue in Chicago.

Mixed-use for example...well we have to define "mixed-use" first...is it residential/commercial? can it be office/commercial? does it mean different kinds of retail? does it have to be in the same building?

From the perspective in which I write it is not essential that every building or even most buildings have more than one use. Certainly it is desirable. But so much depends on the scale. A small neighborhood commercial district can be composed of only one-story retail buildings and be surrounded by a few apartment buildings and mostly single-family houses AND yet be a very urbane, walkable place. I have several examples in mind. But if those neighborhoods were NOT built to the 3 Rules (which you must understand is not something I have made up but have simply observed) then it would cease to be a charming, walkable urban place.

Anyway, again thanks for your comment as it just such comments which will force me to re-examine my perspective and make it stronger.

[Shawn]

Your not gonna like what I have to say, but I think you should go for it. Although I find your 3 rules to be quite simplistic (I am aware that you did this intentionally), I think they offer a great foundation for urban planning. If you do go ahead with the project, I would like to see you focus on a few particular topics.

1) How will personal safety and the risk of theft be dealt with in these isolated parking areas? You suggested valey parking, but not all businesses would have the ability to sustain such a service.

2) You mentioned the role of big box chains in this model. As you know, these stores are often VERY wide and having them stretch out along a sidewalk could be counter productive to encouraging pedestrians to do their shopping on foot. To simply cross one chain store to the next, one would easily walk the length of a football field.

3) You should further develop how sidewalks would have to be widened to better accommodate the added traffic. Especially if, as you mentioned, these stores will be built to encourage more window shopping. You can't have people stopping to peer in windows if others don't have the space to walk around them.

I know these are probably issues you have thought of yourself, I just wanted to let you know that they will be very important to those who would plan on implementing your suggestions.

Good Luck!

Shawn
www.urbnblg.wordpress.com

[Dave Sucher]

Thank you Shawn. Excellent points and I believe that have answers for most -- or at least approaches to getting answers.

Your questions about the big box store interest me particularly. In fact for the fun of it one time I took a proposed Costco (150 thousand SF 'warehouse' store) and re-designed it slightly so that it both met
1. my understanding of Costco's "gotta-have" site-plan elements and
2. the 3 Rules.
It seemed to me to work very well.

[Shawn]

Like I said, I was sure you had considered my questions before, I just wanted you to know that we consider them too! Anyways, I look forward to hearing about the developments of this project.

Shawn

PS: I mistyped my blog address above, I'm at www.urbnblgr.wordpress.com if you ever want to visit. I just started it so it's very short for the time being!

[robert eggleton]

Balancing the yin and yang? Urban requires rural to augment appreciation, and vice versa. Otherwise, entire populations become individualistically egocentric and spiral into an "I can't get no satisfaction" syndrome.

Following is the most recent book review of Rarity from the Hollow for urbanites. The review is by the Editor of Atomjack Science Fiction Magazine. Please post the review, mention the project, or anything else that you think would help. The third short story of the series will be in Beyond Centauri in January. The others were in Wingspan Quarterly and Atomjack (reprinted in Aphelion). Thanks. Robert

Rarity From the Hollow:
A Lacy Dawn Adventure

by Robert Eggleton

Review by Adicus Ryan Garton

Imagine “Wizard of Oz” and “Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy” smashed together and taking place in a hollow in the hills of West Virginia. Now you have an idea of what to expect when you sit down to read Rarity From the Hollow: A Lacy Dawn Adventure by Robert Eggleton.

This novel is an unabashed, unashamed exploration of the life of young Lacy Dawn, as she learns that she is the savior of the universe. The naked, genderless android, Dot-com, who lives in a ship in a cave, told her so. Add her abusive father, her weak-willed mother, a sexually-abused ghost for a best friend that was murdered by her own father, trees that talk to her, a dog that can communicate telepathically with cockroaches and so much more.

There is so much to this story, and its writing is so unblinkingly honest; Eggleton spares us nothing in his descriptions of her father beating her and her mother, the emotions that the mother and daughter go through, the dark creeping insanity that eats away at her Iraq-veteran father, and the life in general of people too poor, too uneducated to escape.

In part, it is a grueling exposition of what children endure when being physically and emotionally abused. Eggleton almost seems to suggest that the only way for a child to escape is to learn that she is the savior of the universe. Lacy Dawn is strong, tough, smart—all those attributes that any child should have—and she reminds us that children are survivors, adaptive and optimistic. Instead of giving us a story of escapism, Eggleton shows us a girl whose life follows her through the story.

But don't think you're going to be reading something harsh and brutal and tragic. This book is laugh-out-loud funny at times, satiric of almost everything it touches upon (some common themes are shopping, masturbation, welfare, growing and selling drugs, and the lives of cockroaches). The characters from the hollow and from the planet Shptiludrp (the Mall of the Universe) are funny almost to the point of tears.

I hate happy endings to stories that deal with any kind of oppression or abuse because they tend to suggest, “In this case, it worked out okay,” and the reader walks away with the impression that the world is a better place (think of all those inner-city sports movies about black kids who win the big championship despite being addicted to crack). I thought for a long time that this book was an escapist fantasy, and when the fantasy broke, it was going to be tragic. No one wants to see a little girl go through heaven only to learn that hell awaits her at the end. And then when I realized that Eggleton was not writing an escapist fantasy, I worried that this happy ending effect was going to take place, making me not like the book, despite all its positive attributes. But when I realized that Lacy Dawn had to fix her life first before the story could progress, and that this was IMPOSSIBLE except by extraterrestrial means, and that Lacy Dawn carried her past with her as part of her instead of in spite of, it made the prospect of a happy ending much better.

Go here, buy the book and read it. It's absolutely fantastic, and the proceeds go to the Lacy Dawn Adventures project. It's like buying ice cream for charity—everybody wins.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

More information about Robert Eggleton and the Lacy Dawn project can be found here.

"Stainless Steel", the story of Lacy Dawn's best friend, can be read right here in Atomjack.

______

______

[Teresa Gilman]

I agree with your three rules and think you should write the book. In addition to building to the street and permeable facades, I would suggest you give some space to the kind of doors/entrances a building has. Doors should say "door". One should not have to stop and figure out where the handle is in amongst the clever designy features of the door. It should not hurt your hand to use it either [we have numerous examples of both situations on the campus where I work].

And, I think there should be parking on all streets. When an area is changed from normal street with parking on it to a "pedestrian walkway" or whatever (as in Ithaca, NY's downtown business district) it changes it in ways you did not want, becoming a wierd non-place, and attracting various types of undesirable activity, that is not good for business OR people watching.

I look forward to reading what you write as you go along, and to the book when it's done.

T.

[Chris Burd]

Are you happy reading comments inside your Adobe Acrobat file, or do you prefer a separate comments document with page references?

[Dave Sucher]

Never thought about it, Chris. Are you asking about redlining/marking-up the chapter? That would be fine. But you are also free to offer the comments here on the blog.

[Chris Burd]

Sorry to take so long getting back to you - Christmas and all. Yes, I'd be happy to mark up a chapter; I'll see what I can do this week.

In general, calling the 3 Rules "the core of 'cityness'" goes a bit far for me. They are certainly part of the core, but I can think of at least a couple of other elements:

Street network. Practically all good urban areas have a fine-grained street pattern with frequent side streets. I'm sure you've read Alan Jacobs' Great Streets. There's a brilliant chapter that shows ground plans of a few dozen major world cities. Jacobs contends that you can tell the good urbanistic cities from the poor ones by looking at the street plan. I think he's mostly right. He has an anecdote about chatting with the mayor of Irvine, California. Why can't Irvine have the same kind of street life as some the older Californian cities, asked the mayor. Jacobs showed him some typical street plans. Oh, I see.

Bill Hillier is British academic who's looked spatial patterns in cities - heavy reading but well worth it. He also sees street network as a key variable.

A second is mixed uses. I'm sure you don't disagree. In a sense, mixed uses are the fundamental characteristic of cities: cities are places of exchange, whether of goods or ideas. For exchanges to happen you have to different things coming together. Those urban areas that have the most different things coming together will have the most "citiness". (Assuming there's a basis for exchange: a Baptist old folks's home next to the city's red-light district won't foster much urban liveliness, perhaps.)

A third element is cityscape. In cities where the main threat to "citiness" is excessive automobile traffic and the types of urban form it naturally generates, then the 3 Rules are right on; they're a critical element to harmonizing car-dependency and medium levels of car traffic with lively, walkable urban spaces.

That's my theoretical analysis, worth every penny I charge for it.

[Victor]

Alright, I'll add my two cents:

Regarding rule 1; I would also mention that sidewalks should be as wide as possible (and that might mean that the sidewalk overlaps the building property). Also, in Suburban Nation, they talk about the ratio of street width to building height and you might want to touch on that. Now, for a bit of criticism: You say that a buildings entrance should be at street level. But I would beg to differ when it comes to residential buildings. Residential buildings should ALWAYS be raised. Not much; perhaps the first floor should be five feet off the ground. This is because there needs to be some separation between the public and private realm, if a person’s window is at ground level, they will always keep the blinds shut and it will remove those "eyes on the street."

Lastly, I would love to see some data backing up some of your thoughts, specifically about parking in the rear. Sure, it looks nice, but I have no reason to believe that it increases pedestrian activities in the area at all! Obviously, the best way to get peds is with public transit, but how about this: Public Parking Garages! Now you park in a location and have to walk to your destination. Also, no one is going to tow your car because you went across the street to shop, which is exactly what will happen if you allow on site parking only. Maybe rule three should be, reduce parking both visibly and physically!

[Brian]

Hello, David. Haven't read your blog in a while. The new book sounds great.. However, as the example above of the big box stores at Bryant and Ninth make clear, my one concern is that the 3 Rules omit dealing with a major problem: the sheer scale of modern American development. A block long box is a block long box, be it a parking garage, a big box store, or an "urban loft" condo project (See the bleakness of the new "urban" housing built over the last decade in downtown San Jose)

The other big problem that needs to be better considered is scale and speed of traffic. Seven lane one way traffic sewers will never be humane or attractive places to be. Functional, perhaps, but not civilized.

Best of luck with your book!