A pattern language

*57

choose ring I, some ring 2, and some ring 3. Suppose that Ni choose ring 1, N2 choose ring 2, and N3 choose ring 3. Since the three rings have specific, well-defined areas, the numbers of people who have chosen the three areas, can be turned into hypothetical densities. In other words, if we (in imagination) distribute the people among the three rings according to their choices, we can work out the hypothetical densities which would occur in the three rings as a result.

Nozv zve are suddenly jaced with two fascinating possibilities:

I. These new densities are different from the actual densities.

II. These new densities are the same as the actual densities.

Case I is much more likely to occur. But this is unstable—since

people’s choices will tend to change the densities. Case II, which is less likely to occur, is stable—since it means that people, choosing freely, will together re-create the very same pattern of density within which they have made these choices. This distinction is fundamental.

If we assume that a given neighborhood, with a given total area, must accommodate a certain number of people (given by the average density of people at that point in the region), then there is just one configuration of densities which is stable in this sense. We now describe a computational procedure which can be used to obtain this stable density configuration.

Before we explain the computational procedure, zve must explain how very fundamental and important this kind of stable density configuration is.

In today’s world, where density gradients are usually not stable, in our sense, most people are forced to live under conditions where the balance of quiet and activity does not correspond to their wishes or their needs, because the total number of available houses and apartments at different distances is inappropriate. What happens, then, is that the rich, who can afford to pay for what they want, are able to find houses and apartments with the balance that they want; the not so rich and poor are forced to take the leavings. All this is made legitimate by the middle-class economics of “ground rent”—the idea that land at different distances from centers of activity, commands different prices, because more or less people want to be at those distances. But actually the fact of differential ground rent is an economic

mechanism which springs up, within an unstable density configuration, to compensate for its instability.

We want to point out that in a neighborhood with a stable density configuration (stable in our sense of the word), the land would not need to cost different prices at different distances, because the total available number of houses in each ring would exactly correspond to the number of people who wanted to live at those distances. With demand equal to supply in every ring, the ground rents, or the price of land, could be the same in every ring, and everyone, rich and poor, could be certain of having the balance they require.

We now come to the problem of computing the stable densities for a given neighborhood. The stability depends on very subtle psychological forces; so far as we know these forces cannot be represented in any psychologically accurate way by mathematical equations, and it is therefore, at least for the moment, impossible to give a mathematical model for the stable density. Instead, we have chosen to use the fact that each person can make choices about his required balance of activity and quiet, and to use people’s choices, within a simple game, as the source of the computation. In short, we have constructed a game, which allows one to obtain the stable density configuration within a few minutes. This game essentially simulates the behavior of the real system, and is, we believe, far more reliable than any mathematical computation.

DENSITY GRADIENTS GAME

x. First draw a map of the three concentric half rings. Make it a half-circle—if you accept the arguments of ECCENTRIC nucleus (28)—otherwise a full circle Smooth this half-circle to fit the horseshoe of the highest density—mark its center as the center of that horseshoe.

2. If the overall radius of the half-circle is R, then the mean radii of the three rings are Ri,R₂,R₃ given by:

Ra = 5^R/⁶

3. Make up a board for the game, which has the three concentric circles shown on it, with the radii marked in blocks, so people can understand them easily, i.e., 1000 feet = 3 blocks.

4. Decide on the total population of this neighborhood. This is

TOWNS

the same as settling on an overall average net density for the area. It will have to be roughly compatible with the overall pattern of density in the region. Let us say that the total population of the community is N families.

5. Find ten people who are roughly similar to the people in the community—vis-a-vis cultural habits, background, and so on. If possible, they should be ten of the people in the actual community itself.

6. Show the players a set of photographs of areas that show typical best examples of different population densities (in families per gross acre), and leave these photographs on display throughout the game so that people can use them when they make their choices.

7. Give each player a disk, which he can place on the board in one of the three rings.

8. Now, to start the game, decide what percentage of the total population is to be in each of the three rings. It doesn’t matter what percentages you choose to start with—they will soon right themselves as the game gets under way—but, for the sake of simplicity, choose multiples of 10 per cent for each ring, i.e., 10 per cent in ring i, 30 per cent in ring 2, 60 per cent in ring 3.

9. Now translate these percentages into actual densities of families per net acre. Since you will have to do this many times during the course of the game, it is advisable to construct a table which translates percentages directly into densities. You can make up such a table by inserting the values for N and R which you have chosen for your community into the formulae below. The formulae are based on the simple arithmetic of area, and population. R is expressed in hundreds of yards—roughly in blocks. The densities are expressed in families per gross acre. Multiply each ring density by a number between 1 and 10, according to the per cent in that ring. Thus, if there are 30 per cent in ring 3, the density there is 3 times the entry in the formulae, or 24N/57tR².

10%

Ring 1 8N/-7tR²

Ring 2 8N/37tR²

Ring 3 8N/57tR²

10. Once you have found the proper densities, from the formulae, write them on three slips of paper, and place these slips into their appropriate rings, on the game board.

it. The slips define a tentative density configuration for the community. Each ring has a certain typical distance from the center. And each ring has a density. Ask people to look carefully at the pictures which represent these densities, and then to decide which of the three rings gives them the best balance of quiet and green, as against access to shops. Ask each person to place his disk in the ring he chooses.

160

12. When all ten disks are on the board, this defines a new distribution of population. Probably, it is different from the one you started with. Now make up a new set of percentages, half-way between the one you originally defined, and the one which people’s disks define, and, again, round off the percentages to the nearest 10 per cent. Here is an example of the way you can get new percentages.

As you see, the new ones are not perfectly half-way between the other two—but as near as you can get, and still have multiples of ten.

13. Now go back to step 9, and go through 9, 10, it, 12 again and again, until the percentages defined by people’s disks are the same as the ones you defined for that round. If you turn these last stable percentages into densities, you have found the stable density configuration for this community. Stop, and have a drink all round.

In our experiments, we have found that this game reaches a stable state very quickly indeed. Ten people, in a few minutes, can define a stable density distribution. We have presented the results of one set of games in the table which follows below.

stable density distributions for

DIFFERENT SIZED COMMUNITIES

These figures are for semi-circular communities.

Density in families per gross acre

TOWNS

It is essential to recognize that the densities given in this table cannot wisely be used just as they stand. The figures will vary with the exact geometry of the neighborhood and with different cultural attitudes in different subcultures. For this reason, we consider it essential that the people of a given community, who want to apply this pattern, play the game themselves, in order to find a stable gradient of densities for their own situation. The numbers we have given above are more for the sake of illustration than anything else.

Therefore:

Once the nucleus of a community is clearly placed— define rings of decreasing local housing density around this nucleus. If you cannot avoid it, choose the densities from the foregoing table. But, much better, if you can possibly manage it, play the density rings game, to obtain these densities, from the intuitions of the very people who are going to live in the community.

Within the rings of density, encourage housing to take the form of housing clusters—self-governing cooperatives of 8 to 15 households, their physical size varying according to the density— house cluster (37). According to the densities in the different rings, build these houses as free-standing houses—house cluster (37), row houses (38), or higher density clusters of housing— housing hill (39). Keep public spaces—promenade (31), small public squares (61)—to those areas which have a high enough density around them to keep them alive—pedestrian DENSITY (123). . . .

162

30 ACTIVITY NODES**

163

. . . this pattern forms those essential nodes of life which help to generate identifiable neighborhood (14), promenade (31),

NETWORK OF PATHS AND CARS (52), and PEDESTRIAN STREET

(100). To understand its action, imagine that a community and its boundary are growing under the influence of community of 7000 (12), SUBCULTURE BOUNDARY ( I 3 ) , IDENTIFIABLE NEIGHBORHOOD (14), NEIGHBORHOOD BOUNDARY ( I 5), ECCENTRIC

nucleus (28), and density rings (29). As they grow, certain “stars” begin to form, where the most important paths meet. These stars are potentially the vital spots of a community. The growth of these stars and of the paths which form them need to be guided to form genuine community crossroads.

Community facilities scattered individually through the city do nothing for the life of the city.

One of the greatest problems in existing communities is the fact that the available public life in them is spread so thin that it has no impact on the community. It is not in any real sense available to the members of the community. Studies of pedestrian behavior make it clear that people seek out concentrations of other people, whenever they are available (for instance, Jan Gehl, “Mennesker til Fods (Pedestrians),” Arkitekten, No. 20, 1968).

To create these concentrations of people in a community, facilities must be grouped densely round very small public squares which can function as nodes—with all pedestrian movement in the community organized to pass through these nodes. Such nodes require four properties.

First, each node must draw together the main paths in the surrounding community. The major pedestrian paths should converge on the square, with minor paths funneling into the major ones, to create the basic star-shape of the pattern. This is much harder to do than one might imagine. To give an example of the difficulty which arises when we try to build this relationship into a town, we show the following plan—a scheme of

164

ours for housing in Peru—in which the paths are all convergent on a very small number of squares.

Public -paths converge on centers of action.

This is not a very good plan—it is too stiff and formal. But it is possible to achieve the same relationship in a far more relaxed manner. In any case the relationship between paths, community facilities, and squares is vital and hard to achieve. It must be taken seriously, from the very outset, as a major feature of the city.

Second, to keep the activity concentrated, it is essential to make the squares rather small, smaller than one might imagine. A square of about 45 X do feet can keep the normal pace of public life well concentrated. This figure is discussed in detail under SMALL PUBLIC SQUARE (6 I ) .

Third, the facilities grouped around any one node must be chosen for their symbiotic relationships. It is not enough merely to group communal functions in so-called community centers. For example, church, cinema, kindergarten, and police station are all community facilities, but they do not support one another mutually. Different people go to them, at different times, with different things in mind. There is no point in grouping them together. To create intensity of action, the facilities which are placed together round any one node must function in a cooperative manner, and must attract the same kinds of people, at the same times of day. For example, when evening entertainments are grouped together, the people who are having a night out can use any one of them, and the total concentration of action increases—see night life (33). When kindergartens and small parks and gardens are grouped together, young families with children may use either, so their total attraction is increased.

Fourth, these activity nodes should be distributed rather evenly

both in the neighborhoods and the communities, and in between them, in the boundaries, encourage the formation of local centers;

around these centers, provide for the growth of housing in the form of clusters, based on face-to-face human

XXl

TOWNS

across the community, so that no house or workplace is more than a few hundred yards from one. In this way a contrast of “busy and quiet” can be achieved at a small scale—and large dead areas can be avoided.
Nodes of different size.

There fore:

Create nodes of activity throughout the community, spread about 300 yards apart. First identify those existing spots in the community where action seems to concentrate itself. Then modify the layout of the paths in the community to bring as many of them through these spots as possible. This makes each spot function as a “node” in the

166

/

path network. Then, at the center of each node, make a small public square, and surround it with a combination of community facilities and shops which are mutually supportive.

❖ *S*

Connect those centers which are most dense, with a wider, more important path for strolling—promenade (31); make special centers for night activities—night life (33) ; whenever new paths are built, make certain that they pass through the centers, so that they intensify the life still further—paths and goals (120); and differentiate the paths so they are wide near the centers and smaller away from them—degrees of publicness (36). At the heart of every center, build a small public square—small public squares (61), and surround each square with an appropriate mix of mutually self-reinforcing facilities—

WORK COMMUNITY (41), UNIVERSITY AS A MARKETPLACE (43), LOCAL TOWN HALL (44), HEALTH CENTER (47), BIRTH PLACES (65), TEENACE SOCIETY (84), SHOPFRONT SCHOOL (85), INDIVIDUALLY OWNED SHOPS (87), STREET CAFE (88), BEER HALL (90), FOOD STANDS (93). . . .

167

3 I PROMENADE**
168

. . . assume now that there is an urban area, subdivided into subcultures and communities each with its boundaries. Each subculture in the mosaic of subcultures (8), and each community of 7000 (12) has a promenade as its backbone. And each promenade helps to form activity nodes (30) along its length, by generating the flow of people which the activity nodes need in order to survive.

*J* ‘h

Each subculture needs a center for its public life: a place where you can go to see people, and to be seen.

The promenade, “paseo,” “passegiata,” evening stroll, is common in the small towns of Italy, Spain, Mexico, Greece, Yugoslavia, Sicily, and South America. People go there to walk up and down, to meet their friends, to stare at strangers, and to let strangers stare at them.

Throughout history there have been places in the city where people who shared a set of values could go to get in touch with each other. These places have always been like street theaters: they invite people to watch others, to stroll and browse, and to loiter:

In Mexico, in any small town plaza every Thursday and Sunday night with the band playing and the weather mild, the boys walk this way, the girls walk that, around and around, and the mothers and fathers sit on iron-scrolled benches and watch. (Ray Bradbury, “The girls walk this way; the boys walk that way . . .” West, Los Angeles Times Sunday Magazine, April 5, 1970.)

In all these places the beauty of the promenade is simply this: people with a shared way of life gather together to rub shoulders and confirm their community.

Is the promenade in fact a purely Latin institution:¹ Our experiments suggest that it is not. The fact is that the kinds of promenades where this strolling happens are not common in a city, and they are especially uncommon in a sprawling urban region. But experiments by Luis Racionero at the Department of

Architecture at the University of California, Berkeley, have shown that wherever the possibility of this public contact docs exist, people will seek it, as long as it is close enough. Racionero interviewed 37 people in several parts of San Francisco, living various distances from a promenade, and found that people who lived within 20 minutes used it, while people who lived more than 20 minutes away did not.

Do not use Use the promenade the promenade

People who live less

than 20 minutes away 13 1

People who live more

than 20 minutes away 3 18

It seems that people, of all cultures, may have a general need for the kind of human mixing which the promenade makes possible; but that if it is too far, the effort to get there simply outweighs the importance of the need. In short, to make sure that all the people in a city can satisfy this need, there must be promenades at frequent intervals.

Exactly how frequent should they be? Racionero establishes 20 minutes as the upper limit, but his survey does not investigate frequency of use. We know that the closer the promenade is, the more often people will use it. We guess that if the promenade is within 10 minutes or less, people will use it often—perhaps even once or twice a week.

The relation between the catch basin of the promenade, and the actual physical paved area of the promenade itself, is extremely critical. We show in pedestrian density (123), that places with less than one person for every 150 to 300 square feet of paved surface, will seem dead and uninviting. It is therefore essential to be certain that the number of people who might, typically, be out strolling on the promenade, is large enough to maintain this pedestrian density along its length. To check this relation, we calculate as follows:

A 10-minute walk amounts to roughly 1500 feet (150 feet per minute), which is probably also about the right length for the promenade itself. This means that the catch basin for a promenade has a shape roughly like this:

31 PROMENADE
A promenade and its catch basin.

This area contains 320 acres. If we assume an average density of 50 people per gross acre, then there are 16,000 people in the area. If one-fifth of this population uses the promenade once a week, for an hour between 6 and 10 p.m., then at any given moment between those hours, there are some 100 people on the promenade. If it is 1500 feet long, at 300 square feet per person, it can therefore be 20 feet wide, at the most, and would be better if it were closer to 10 feet wide. It is feasible, but only just.

We see then, that a promenade 1500 feet long, with the catch basin we have defined and the population density stated, should be able to maintain a lively density of activity, provided that it is not more than about 20 feet wide. We want to emphasize that a promenade will not work unless the ■pedestrian density is high enough, and that a calculation of this kind must always be made to check its feasibility.

The preceding figures arc meant to be illustrative. They establish a rough order of magnitude for promenades and their catch basin populations. But we have also seen successful promenades for populations of 2000 (a fishing village in Peru) ; and we have seen a promenade for 2,000,000 (Las Ramblas in Barcelona). They both work, although they are very different in character. The small one with its catch basin of 2000 works, because the cultural habit of the paseo is so strong there, a higher percentage of the people use it more often, and the density of people on the promenade is less than we would imagine—it is so beautiful that people enjoy it even if it is not so crowded. The large one works as a citywide event. People are willing to drive a long distance to it—they may not come as often, but when they do, it is worth the ride—it is exciting—packed—teeming with people.

We imagine the pattern of promenades in a city to be just as varied—a continuum ranging from small local promenades serv-

TOWNS

ing 2000 people to large intense ones serving the entire city—each different in character and density of action.

Finally, what are the characteristics of a successful promenade? Since people come to see people and to be seen, a promenade must have a high density of pedestrians using it. It must therefore be associated with places that in themselves attract people, for example, clusters of eating places and small shops.

A 'promenade in Paris.

Further, even though the real reasons for coming might have to do with seeing people and being seen, people find it easier to take a walk if they have a “destination.” This destination may be real, like a coke shop or cafe, or it may be partly imaginary, “let’s walk round the block.” But the promenade must provide people with a strong goal.

It is also important that people do not have to walk too far between the most important points along the promenade. Informal observation suggests that any point which is more than 150 feet from activity becomes unsavory and unused. In short, good promenades are part of a path through the most active parts of the community; they are suitable as destinations for an evening walk; the walk is not too long, and nowhere on it desolate: no point of the stroll is more than 150 feet from a hub of activity.

A variety of facilities will function as destinations along the promenade: ice cream parlors, coke shops, churches, public gardens, movie houses, bars, volleyball courts. Their potential will depend on the extent to which it is possible to make provisions for people to stay: widening of pedestrian paths, planting of trees, walls to lean against, stairs and benches and niches for sitting,

I 72

opening of street fronts to provide sidewalk cafes, or displays of activities or goods where people might like to linger.

Therefore:

Encourage the gradual formation of a promenade at the heart of every community, linking the main activity nodes, and placed centrally, so that each point in the community is within io minutes’ walk of it. Put main points of attraction at the two ends, to keep a constant movement up and down.

No matter how large the promenade is, there must be enough people coming to it to make it dense with action, and this can be precisely calculated by the formula of pedestrian density (123). The promenade is mainly marked by concentrations of activity along its length—activity nodes (30) ; naturally, some of these will be open at night—night life (33); and somewhere on the promenade there will be a concentration of shops—shopping street (32). It might also be appropriate to include carnival (58) and dancing in the street (63) in very large promenades. The detailed physical character of the promenade is given by pedestrian street (ioo) and path shape (121). . . .

32 SHOPPING STREET*
	ii

'7 +

. . . this pattern helps to complete the magic of the city (io) and promenade (31). And, each time a shopping street gets built, it will also help to generate the web of shopping (19).

Shopping centers depend on access: they need locations near major traffic arteries. However, the shoppers themselves don’t benefit from traffic: they need quiet, comfort, and convenience, and access from the pedestrian paths in the surrounding area.

This simple and obvious conflict has almost never been effectively resolved. On the one hand, we have shopping strips. Here the shops are arranged along the major traffic arteries. This is convenient for cars, but it is not convenient for pedestrians. A strip does not have the characteristics which pedestrian areas need.

Shopping strip—for cars.

On the other hand, we have those “pre-automobile” shopping streets in the center of old towns. Here the pedestrians’ needs are taken into account, at least partially. But, as the town spreads out and the streets become congested, they are inconvenient to reach; and again the cars dominate the narrow streets.

The modern solution is the shopping center. They are usually located along, or near to, major traffic arteries, so they

SUMMARY OF THE LANGUAGE

between the house clusters, around the centers, and especially in the boundaries between neighborhoods, encourage the formation of work communities;

41. WORK COMMUNITY

42. INDUSTRIAL RIBBON

43. UNIVERSITY AS A MARKETPLACE

44. LOCAL TOWN HALL

45. NECKLACE OF COMMUNITY PROJECTS

46. MARKET OF MANY SHOPS

47. HEALTH CENTER

48. HOUSING IN BETWEEN

between the house clusters and work communities, allow the local road and path network to grow informally, piecemeal;

49. LOOPED LOCAL ROADS

50. T JUNCTIONS

51. GREEN STREETS

52. NETWORK OF PATHS AND CARS

53. MAIN GATEWAYS

54. ROAD CROSSING

55. RAISED WALK

56. BIKE PATHS AND RACKS 57- CHILDREN IN THE CITY

XXll

Old shopping street—inconvenient for cars and people.

are convenient for cars; and they often have pedestrian precincts in them—so that, in theory at least, they are comfortable and convenient for pedestrians. But they are usually isolated, in the middle of a vast parking lot, and thereby disconnected from the pedestrian fabric of the surrounding areas. In short, you cannot walk to them.

Nevu shop-ping center—only for cars.

To be convenient for traffic, and convenient for people walking, and connected to the fabric of the surrounding town, the shops must be arranged along a street, itself pedestrian, but opening off a major traffic artery, perhaps two, with parking behind, or underneath, to keep the cars from isolating the shops from surrounding areas.

We observed this pattern growing spontaneously in certain neighborhoods of Lima, Peru: a wide road is set down for automobile traffic, and the shops begin to form themselves, in pedestrian streets that are perpendicular off-shoots off this road.

Shopping streets growing spontaneously in Liuia) Peru.

This pattern is also the form of the famous Stroget in Copenhagen. The Stroget is the central shopping spine for the city; it is extremely long—almost a mile—and is entirely pedestrian, only cut periodically by roads which run at right angles to it.

Therefore:

major road
	shopping street

Encourage local shopping centers to grow in the form of short pedestrian streets, at right angles to major roads and opening off these roads—with parking behind the shops, so that the cars can pull directly off the road, and yet not harm the shopping street.

Treat the physical character of the street like any other pedestrian STREET (100) on the NETWORK OF PATHS AND CARS (52), at right angles to major parallel roads (23) ; have as many shops as small as possible—individually owned shops (87) ; where the shopping street crosses the road, make the crossing wide, giving priority to the pedestrians— road crossing (54) ; parking can easily be provided by a single row of parking spaces in an alley lying behind the shops—all along the backs of the shops, off the alley, with the parking spaces walled, and perhaps even given canvas roofs, so that they don’t destroy the area—shielded parking (97), canvas roofs (244). Make sure that every shopping street includes a market of many shops (46), and some housing IN BETWEEN (48) . . . .

33 NIGHT LIFE*
	- ---

179

. . . every community has some kind of public night life— MAGIC OF THE CITY (io), COMMUNITY OF 7OOO (l2). If there is a promenade in the community, the night life is probably along the promenade, at least in part—promenade (31). This pattern describes the details of the concentration of night time activities.

Most of the city’s activities close down at night; those which stay open won’t do much for the night life of the city unless they are together.

This pattern is drawn from the following seven points:

1. People enjoy going out at night; a night on the town is something special.

2. If evening activities such as movies, cafes, ice cream parlors, gas stations, and bars are scattered throughout the community, each one by itself cannot generate enough attraction.

One bar by itself is a lonely flace at night.

3. Many people do not go out at night because they feel they have no place to go. They do not feel like going out to a specific establishment, but they do feel like going out. An evening center, particularly when it is full of light, functions as a focus for such people.

4. Fear of the dark, especially in those places far away from one’s own back yard, is a common experience, and quite simple to understand. Throughout our evolution night has been a time to stay quiet and protected, not a time to move about freely.

I 80

A cluster of night sfots creates life in the street.

5. Nowadays this instinct is anchored in the fact that at night street crimes are most prevalent in places where there are too few pedestrians to provide natural surveillance, but enough pedestrians to make it worth a thief’s while, in other words, dark, isolated night spots invite crime. A paper by Shlomo Angel, “The Ecology of Night Life” (Center for Environmental Structure, Berkeley, 1968), shows the highest number of street crimes occurring in those areas where night spots are scattered. Areas of very low or very high night pedestrian density are subject to much less crime.

No. of crimes
Isolated night sfots invite crime.

6. It is difficult to estimate the exact number of night spots that need to be grouped to create a sense of night life. From observation, we guess that it takes about six, minimum.

7. On the other hand, massive evening centers, combining evening services which a person could not possibly use on the same night, are alienating. For example, in New York the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts makes a big splash at night, but it makes no sense. No one is going to the ballet and the theater and a concert during one night on the town. And centralizing these places robs the city as a whole of several centers of night life.

181

All these arguments together suggest small, scattered centers of mutually enlivening night spots, the services grouped to form cheery squares, with lights and places to loiter, where people can spend several hours in an interesting way. Here are some examples of small groups of mutually sustaining night activities.

A movie theater, a restaurant and a bar, and a bookstore open till midnight; a smoke shop.

A laundromat, liquor store and cafe; and a meeting hall and beer hall.

Lodge hall, bowling alley, bar, playhouse.

A terminal, a diner, hotels, nightclubs, casinos.

Therefore:

Knit together shops, amusements, and services which are open at night, along with hotels, bars, and all-night diners to form centers of night life: well-lit, safe, and lively places that increase the intensity of pedestrian activity at night by drawing all the people who are out at night to the same few spots in the town. Encourage these evening centers to distribute themselves evenly across the town.

•£*

Treat the physical layout of the night life area exactly like any other activity node (30), except that all of its establishments are open at night. The evening establishments might include LOCAL TOWN HALL (44), CARNIVAL (58), DANCING IN THE STREET (63), STREET CAFE (88), BEER HALL (90), TRAVELER^ INN (9I ) . . . .

182

34 INTERCHANGE

183

. . . this pattern defines the points which generate the web of public transportation (16). It also helps to complete local transport areas (ii) by guaranteeing the possibility of interchanges at the center of each transport area, where people can change from their bikes, or local mini-buses, to the long distance transit lines that connect different transport areas to one another.

Interchanges play a central role in public transportation. Unless the interchanges are working properly, the public transportation system will not be able to sustain itself.

Everyone needs public transportation sometimes. But it is the steady users who keep it going. If the steady users do not keep it going, then there is no system for the occasional user. To maintain a steady flow of users, interchanges must be extremely convenient and easy to use: i. Workplaces and the housing for people who especially need public transportation must be distributed rather evenly around interchanges. 2. The interchanges must connect up with the surrounding flow of pedestrian street life. 3. It must be easy to change from one mode of travel to another.

In more detail:

I. Workers are the bread and butter of the transportation system. If the system is to be healthy, all the workplaces in town must be within walking distance of the interchanges. Furthermore, the distribution of workplaces around interchanges should be more or less even—see scattered work (9). When they are concentrated around one or two, the rush hour flow crowds the trains, and creates inefficiencies in the system as a whole.

Furthermore, some of the area around interchanges should be given over to houses for those people who rely entirely on public transportation—especially old people. Old people depend on public transportation; they make up a large proportion of the system’s regular users. To meet their needs, the area around interchanges must be zoned so that the kind of housing that suits them will develop there—old people everywhere (40).

34- INTERCHANGE

2. The interchange must be convenient for people walking from their homes and jobs, and it must be safe. People will not use an interchange if it is dingy, derelict, and deserted. This means that the interchange must be continuous with local pedestrian life. Parking lots must be kept to one side, so that people do not have to walk across them to get to the station. And there must be enough shops and kiosks in the interchange, to keep a steady flow of people moving in and out of it and through it.

3. If the system is going to be successful, there must be no more than a few minutes’ walk—600 feet at the most—between points of transfer. And the distance should decrease as the trips become more local; from bus to bus, 100 feet maximum; from rapid transit to bus, 200 feet maximum; from train to rapid transit, 300 feet maximum. In rainy climates the connecting paths should be almost entirely covered—arcades (119). What’s more, the most important transfer connections should not involve crossing streets: if necessary sink the roads or build bridges to make the transfer smooth.

For details on the organization of interchanges, see “390 Requirements for Rapid Transit Stations,” Center for Environmental Structure, 1964, partly published in “Relational Complexes in Architecture” (Christopher Alexander, Van Maren King, Sara Ishikawa, Michael Baker, Architectural Record, September 1966, pp. 185-90).

Therefore:

At every interchange in the web of transportation follow these principles:

1. Surround the interchange with workplaces and housing types which specially need public transportation.

2. Keep the interior of the interchange continuous with the exterior pedestrian network, and maintain this continuity by building in small shops and kiosks and by keeping parking to one side.

3. Keep the transfer distance between different modes of transport down to 300 feet wherever possible, with an absolute maximum of 600 feet.

SUMMARY OF THE LANGUAGE

in the communities and neighborhoods, provide public open land where people can relax, rub shoulders and renew themselves j

in each house cluster and work community, provide the smaller bits of common land, to provide for local versions of the same needs j

72. LOCAL SPORTS

73. ADVENTURE PLAYGROUND

74. ANIMALS

within the framework of the common land, the clusters, and the work communities encourage transformation of

continuous pedestrian network

/ surrounding housing \ and work places

short transfer distance

Recognize that the creation of workplaces around every interchange contributes to the development of scattered work (9). Place housing hills (39), old people everywhere (40), and work communities (41) round the interchange; treat the outside of the interchange as an activity node (30) to assure its continuity with the pedestrian network; treat the transfers as arcades (119) where necessary to keep them under cover; give every interchange a bus stop (92) on the mini-bus (20) network. . . .

I 86

around these centers_y provide for the growth oj housing in the form of clusters, based on face to face human groufs:

35 household mix*

t 88

. . . the mix of households in an area does almost more than anything else to generate, or destroy, the character of an identifiable NEIGHBORHOOD ( 14.), of a HOUSE CLUSTER (37), of a work community (41), ^or> most generally of all, of a life cycle (26). The question is, what kind of mix should a well-balanced neighborhood contain?

No one stage in the life cycle is self-sufficient.

People need support and confirmation from people who have reached a different stage in the life cycle, at the same time that they also need support from people who are at the same stage as they are themselves.

However, the needs which generate separation tend to overwhelm the need for mixture. Present housing patterns tend to keep different types of households segregated from each other. There are vast areas of two-bedroom houses, other areas of studio and one-bedroom apartments, other areas of three- and four-bedroom houses. This means that we have corresponding areas of single people, couples, and small families with children, segregated by type.

The effects of household segregation are profound. In the pattern life cycle (26), we have suggested that normal growth through the stages of life requires contact, at each stage, with people and institutions from all the other ages of man. Such contact is completely foiled if the housing mix in one’s neighborhood is skewed toward one or two stages only. On the other hand, when the balance of life cycles is well related to the kinds of housing that are available in a neighborhood, the possibilities for contact become concrete. Each person can find in the face-to-face life of his neighborhood at least passing contact with people from every stage of life. Teenagers see young couples, old people watch the very young, people living alone draw sustenance from large families, youngsters look to the middle-aged for models, and so on: it is all a medium through which people feel their way through life.

1 89

TOWNS

This need for a mix of housing must be offset against the need to be near people similar in age and way of life to oneself. Taking these two needs together, what is the right balance for the housing mix?

The right balance can be derived straightforwardly from the statistics of the region. First, determine the percentage of each household type for the region as a whole; second, use the same percentages to guide the gradual growth of the housing mix within the neighborhood. For example, if 40 per cent of a metropolitan region’s households are families, 25 per cent are couples, 20 per cent are individuals, and 10 per cent group households, then we would expect the houses in each neighborhood to have roughly the same balance.

Let us ask, finally, how large a group should the mix be applied to? We might try to create a mix in every house (obviously absurd), or in every cluster of a dozen houses, or in every neighborhood, or merely in every town (this last has almost no significant effect). We believe that the mix will only work if it exists in a human group small enough to have some internal political and human intercourse—this could be a cluster of a dozen families, or a neighborhood of 500 people.

Therefore:

ptsr jgroup households
	families

Encourage growth toward a mix of household types in every neighborhood, and every cluster, so that one-person households, couples, families with children, and group households are side by side.

Make especially sure there are provisions for old people in every neighborhood—old people everywhere (40), and that even with this mix, young children will have enough playmates—connected play (68); and build the details of the different kinds of households, according to the appropriate more detailed patterns to reinforce the mix—the family (75), house for a small

FAMILY (76), HOUSE FOR A COUPLE (77), HOUSE FOR ONE PERSON (78). . . .

191

36 DEGREES OF PUBLICNESS**

192

. . . within the neighborhoods—identifiable neighborhood (14)—there are naturally some areas where life is rather concentrated activity nodes (30), others where it is slower, and others in between—density rings (29). It is essential to differentiate groups of houses and the paths which lead to them according to this gradient.

❖ ❖ *v*

People are different, and the way they want to place their houses in a neighborhood is one of the most basic kinds of difference.

Some people want to live where the action is. Others want more isolation. This corresponds to a basic human personality dimension, which could be called the “extrovert-introvert” dimension, or the “community loving-privacy loving” dimension. Those who want the action like being near services, near shops, they like a lively atmosphere outside their houses, and they are happy to have strangers going past their houses all the time. Those who want more isolation like being away from services and shops, enjoy a very small scale in the areas outside their houses, and don’t want strangers going past their houses. (See for example, Nancy Marshall, “Orientations Toward Privacy: Environmental and Personality Components,” James Madison College, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan.)

The variation of different people along the extrovert-introvert dimension is very well described by Frank Hendricks and Malcolm MacNair in “Concepts of Environmental Quality Standards Based on Life Styles,” report to the American Public Health Association, February 12, 1969, pp. 11-15. The authors identify several kinds of persons and characterize each by the relative amount of time spent in extroverted activities and in introverted activities. Francis Loetterle has shed further light on the problem in “Environment Attitudes and Social Life in Santa Clara County,” Santa Clara County Planning Department, San Jose,

California, 1967. He asked 3300 households how far they wanted to be from various community services. The results were: 20 per cent of the households interviewed wanted to be located less than three blocks from commercial centers; 60 per cent wanted to be located between four and six blocks away; 20 per cent wanted to be located more than six blocks away (mean block size in Santa Clara County is 150 yards). The exact distances apply only to Santa Clara. But the overall result overwhelmingly supports our contention that people vary in this way and shows that they have quite different needs as far as the location and character of houses is concerned.

To make sure that the different kinds of people can find houses which satisfy their own particular desires, we suggest that each cluster of houses, and each neighborhood should have three kinds of houses, in about equal numbers: those which are nearest to the action, those which are half-way between, and those which are almost completely isolated. And, to support this pattern we need, also, three distinct kinds of paths:

1. Paths along services, wide and open for activities and crowds, paths that connect activities and encourage busy through traffic.

2. Paths remote from services, narrow and twisting, to discourage through traffic, with many at right angles and dead ends.

3. Intermediate types of paths linking the most remote and quiet paths to the most central and busy ones.

This pattern is as important in the design of a cluster of a few houses as it is in the design of a neighborhood. When we were helping a group of people to design their own cluster of houses, we first asked each person to consider his preference for location on the basis of extrovert-introvert. Three groups emerged: four “extroverts” who wished to be as near the pedestrian and community action as possible, four “introverts” who desired as much remoteness and privacy as possible, and the remaining four who wanted a bit of both. The site plan they made, using this pattern, is shown below, with the positions which the three kinds of people chose.

36 DEGREES OF PUBLICNESS
In one house cluster: private homes, 'public homes, in-bet

Therefore:

Make a clear distinction between three kinds of homes —those on quiet backwaters, those on busy streets, and those that are more or less in between. Make sure that those on quiet backwaters are on twisting paths, and that these houses are themselves physically secluded; make sure that the more public houses are on busy streets with many people passing by all day long and that the houses themselves are relatively exposed to the passers-by. The in-between houses may then be located on the paths half-way between the other two. Give every neighborhood about equal numbers of these three kinds of homes.

195 summary of the language

the smallest independent social institutions: the families, workgroups, and gathering places. The family, in all its forms 3

the workgroups, including all kinds of workshops and offices and even children’s learning groups;

TOWNS

Use this pattern to help differentiate the houses both in neighborhoods and in house clusters. Within a neighborhood, place higher density clusters along the busier streets—housing hill (39), kow houses (38), and lower density clusters along the backwaters—house cluster (37), row houses (38). The actual busy streets themselves should either be pedestrian streets (100) or raised walks (55) on major roads; the backwaters green streets (51), or narrow paths with a distinct path shape (121). Where lively streets are wanted, make sure the density of housing is high enough to generate the liveliness—

PEDESTRIAN DENSITY ( I 23) . . . .

I96

37 HOUSE CLUSTER**

■97

. . . the fundamental unit of organization within the neighborhood-IDENTIFIABLE NEIGHBORHOOD (14)-is the duster of 3

dozen houses. By varying the density and composition of different clusters, this pattern may also help to generate density rings (29), household mix (35)) and degrees of publicness (36).

❖ ❖ *5*

People will not feel comfortable in their houses unless a group of houses forms a cluster, with the public land between them jointly owned by all the householders.

When houses are arranged on streets, and the streets owned by the town, there is no way in which the land immediately outside the houses can reflect the needs of families and individuals living in those houses. The land will only gradually get shaped to meet their needs if they have direct control over the land and its repair.

This pattern is based on the idea that the cluster of land and homes immediately around one’s own home is of special importance. It is the source for gradual differentiation of neighborhood land use, and it is the natural focus of neighborly interaction.

Herbert Gans, in The Levittowners (New York: Pantheon, 1967), has collected some powerful evidence for this tendency. Gans surveyed visiting habits on a typical block tract development. Of the 149 people he surveyed, all of them were engaged in some fattern of regular visiting with their neighbors. The interesting finding is the morphology of this visiting pattern.

Consider the following diagram—one like it can be made for almost every house in a tract. There is a house on either side, one or two across the street, and one directly behind, across a garden fence.

Ninety-three fer cent of all the neighborhood visiting engaged in by the subjects is confined to this sfatial cluster.

_;y, u\D D,

minima'!

- \ _i^i ! i

vVi i i

0*z a typical block each home is at the center of its own cluster.

And when asked “Whom do you visit most?” 91 per cent said the people they visit most are immediately across the street or next door.

The beauty of this finding is its indication of the strength of the spatial cluster to draw people together into neighborly contact. The most obvious and tribal-like cluster—the homes on either side and across the street—forms roughly a circle, and it is there that most contact occurs. And if we add to this shape the home immediately behind, although it is separated by private gardens and a fence, we can account for nearly all the visiting that goes on in the Levittown neighborhood.

We conclude that people continue to act according to the laws of a spatial cluster, even when the block layout and the neighborhood plan do their best to destroy this unit and make it anonymous.

Gans’ data underscore our intuitions: people want to be part of a neighborly spatial cluster; contact between people sharing such a cluster is a vital function. And this need stands, even when people are able to drive and see friends all over the city.

What about the size of the cluster? What is the appropriate size? In Gans’ investigations each home stands at the center of a cluster of five or six other homes. But this is certainly not a natural limit for a housing cluster since the Levittown block layouts are so confining. In our experience, when the siting of the homes is attuned to the cluster pattern, the natural limit arises entirely from the balance between the informality and coherence of the group.

TOWNS

The clusters seem to work best if they have between 8 and 12 houses each. With one representative from each family, this is the number of people that can sit round a common meeting table, can talk to each other directly, face to face, and can therefore make wise decisions about the land they hold in common. With 8 or 10 households, people can meet over a kitchen table, exchange news on the street and in the gardens, and generally, without much special attention, keep in touch with the whole of the group. When there are more than 10 or 12 homes forming a cluster, this balance is strained. We therefore set an upper limit of around 12 on the number of households that can be naturally drawn into a cluster. Of course, the average size for clusters might be less, perhaps around 6 or 8; and clusters of 3, 4, or 5 homes can work perfectly well.

Now, assuming that a group of neighbors, or a neighborhood association, or a planner, wants to give some expression to this pattern, what are the critical issues?

First, the geometry. In a new neighborhood, with houses built on the ground, we imagine quite dramatic clusters, with the houses built around or to the side of common land; and with a core to the cluster that gradually tapers off at the edges.

A cluster of 12 houses.

In existing neighborhoods of free-standing houses, the pattern must be brought into play gradually by relaxing zoning ordinances, and allowing people to gradually knit together clusters out of the existing grid—see common land (67) and the family (75). It is even possible to implement the pattern with

ROW houses (38) and housing hills (39). In this case the configuration of the rows, and the wings of the apartment building, form the cluster.

In all cases common land which is shared by the cluster is an essential ingredient. It acts as a focus and physically knits the group together. This common land can be as small as a path or as large as a green.

On the other hand, care must be taken not to make the clusters too tight or self-contained, so that they exclude the larger community or seem too constricting and claustrophobic. There needs to be some open endedness and overlapping among clusters.

Overlapping clusters in a Turkish village.

Along with the shape of the cluster, the way in which it is owned is critical. If the pattern of ownership is not in accord with the physical properties of the clustery the pattern will not take hold. Very simply, the cluster must be owned and maintained by its constituent households. The households must be able to organize themselves as a corporation, capable of owning all the common land they share. There are many examples of tiny, user-owned housing corporations such as this. We know several places in our region where such experiments are under way, and places where they have been established for many years. And we have heard, from visitors to the Center, of similar developments in various parts of the world.

We advocate a system of ownership where the deed to one home carries with it part ownership in the cluster to which the home belongs; and ideally, this in turn carries with it part owner-

201

TOWNS

ship in the neighborhood made up of several clusters. In this way, every owner is automatically a shareholder in several levels of public land. And each level, beginning with the homes in their clusters, is a political unit with the power to control the processes of its own growth and repair.

Under such a system, the housing, whether in low or high density neighborhoods, can gradually find its way toward an abiding expression of the cluster. And the clusters themselves will come to support a quality of neighborhood life that, from our broken down neighborhoods now, we can only dimly perceive.

The unavowed secret of man is that he wants to be confirmed in his being and his existence by his fellow men and that he wishes them to make it possible for him to confirm them, and . . . not merely in the family, in the party assembly or in the public house, but also in the course of neighborly encounters, perhaps when he or the other steps out of the door of his house or to the window of his house and the greeting with which they greet each other will be accompanied by a glance of well-wishing, a glance in which curiosity, mistrust, and routine will have been overcome by a mutual sympathy: the one gives the other to understand that he affirms his presence. This is the indispensable minimum of humanity. (Martin Buber, Gleanings, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1969, p. 94.)

Therefore:

Arrange houses to form very rough, but identifiable clusters of 8 to 12 households around some common land and paths. Arrange the clusters so that anyone can walk through them, without feeling like a trespasser.

202

•I* •{*

Use this pattern as it is for low densities, up to about 15 houses per acre 5 at higher densities, modify the cluster with the additional structure given by row houses (38) or housing hill (39). Always provide common land between the houses— common land (67) and a shared common workshop—home workshop (157). Arrange paths clearly—circulation realms (98)—and lay these paths out in such a way that they create busier paths and backwaters, even within the cluster—degrees of publicness (36); keep parking in small parking lots (103), and make the houses in the cluster suit the households which will live there—the family (75), house for a small family (76), HOUSE for a couple (77), house for one PERSON (78), YOUR OWN HOME (79). • . .

38 ROW HOUSES*

204

. . . in certain parts of a community, the detached homes and gardens of a house cluster (37) will not work, because they are not dense enough to generate the denser parts of density rings (29) and degrees of publicness (36). To help create these larger patterns, it is necessary to build row houses instead.

*£♦

At densities of 15 to 30 houses per acre, row houses are essential. But typical row houses are dark inside, and stamped from an identical mould.

Above 1 5 houses per acre, it is almost impossible to make houses freestanding without destroying the open space around them; the open space which is left gets reduced to nothing more than shallow rings around the houses. And apartments do not solve the problem of higher densities; they keep people off the ground and they have no private gardens.

Row houses solve these problems. But row houses, in their conventional form, have problems of their own. Conventional row houses all conform, approximately, to the following diagram. The houses have a short frontage and a long depth, and share the party wall along their long side.

Typical raw house pattern.

Because of the long party walls, many of the rooms are poorly lit. The houses lack privacy—there is nowhere in th'e houses or their yards that is very far from a party wall. The small yards are made even worse by the fact that they are at the short ends of the house, so that only a small part of the indoor space can be

205

SUMMARY OF THE LANGUAGE

93. FOOD STANDS

94. SLEEPING IN PUBLIC

This completes the global patterns which define a town or a community. We now start that part of the language which gives shape to groups of buildings, and individual buildings, on the land_y in three dimensions. These are the patterns which can be “designed” or “built”—the patterns which define the individual buildings and the space between buildings; where we are dealing for the first time with patterns that are under the control of individuals or small groups of individuals, who are able to build the patterns all at once.

The first group of patterns helps to lay out the overall arrangement of a group of buildings: the height and number of these buildings, the entrances to the site, main parking areas, and lines of movement through the complex;

95. BUILDING COMPLEX

96. NUMBER OF STORIES

97. SHIELDED PARKING

98. CIRCULATION REALMS

99. MAIN BUILDING

100. PEDESTRIAN STREET

101. BUILDING THOROUGHFARE

102. FAMILY OF ENTRANCES

103. SMALL PARKING LOTS

XXV

adjacent to the garden. And there is almost no scope for individual variation in the houses, with the result that terraces of row houses are often rather sterile.

These four problems of row houses can easily be solved by making the houses long and thin, along the paths, like cottages. In this case, there is plenty of room for subtle variations from house to house—each plan can be quite different; and it is easy to arrange the plan to let the light in.

) fl

Houses long and thin along the falh.

This kind of house has 30 per cent of its perimeter fixed and 70 per cent free for individual variations. A house in a conventional terrace of row houses has 70 per cent of its perimeter fixed and only 30 per cent open to individual variations. So the house can take on a variety of shapes, with a guarantee of a reasonable amount of privacy for its garden and for most of the house, an increase in the amount of light into the house, and an increase in the amount of indoor space that can be next to outdoor areas.

These advantages of the long thin row house are so obvious, it is natural to wonder why they aren’t used more often. The reason is, of course, that roads do not permit it. So long as houses front directly onto roads, i.t is imperative that they have

38 ROW HOUSES

the shortest frontage possible, so as to save the cost of roads and services—the cost of roads is a large part of any housing budget. But in the pattern we propose, we have been able to avoid this difficulty altogether, by making the houses front only onto paths —which don’t cost much—and it is then these paths which connect to the roads, at right angles, in the way prescribed by

mwMswsm

NETWORK OF PATHS AND CARS (52).

it ft!,’.wm

Roads away from houses.

Finally, a word on density. As we see from the sketch below, it is possible to build a two-story house of 1200 square feet on an area 30 x 20, using a total area (path, house, garden) of about 1300 square feet, and it is even possible to manage with an absolute minimum of 1000 square feet.

2& Y.

1

/uu*c

I

1300 square feet of land -per house.

It is therefore possible to build row houses at a density of 30 per net acre. Without parking, or with less parking, this figure could conceivably be even higher.

Therefore:

TOWNS

For row houses, place houses along pedestrian paths that run at right angles to local roads and parking lots, and give each house a long frontage and a shallow depth.

❖

Make the individual houses and cottages as long and thin along the paths as possible—long thin house (109)} vary the houses according to the different household types—the family (75), HOUSE FOR A SMALL FAMILY (76), HOUSE FOR A COUPLE (77), house for one person (78); build roads across the paths, at right angles to them—parallel roads (23), network of paths and cars (52), with small parking lots off the roads—small parking lots (103). In other respects build row houses in clusters—house cluster (37), building complex (95). . . .

208

39 HOUSING HILL

209

. . . at the still higher densities required in the inner ring of the community’s density rings (29), and wherever densities rise above 30 houses per acre or are four stories high—four-story limit (21), the house clusters become like hills.

•£• ♦£*

Every town has places in it which are so central and desirable that at least 30-50 households per acre will be living there. But the apartment houses which reach this density are almost all impersonal.

In the pattern your own home (79), we discuss the fact that every family needs its own home with land to build on, land where they can grow things, and a house which is unique and clearly marked as theirs. A typical apartment house, with flat walls and identical windows, cannot provide these qualities.

The form of the housing hill comes essentially from three requirements. First, people need to maintain contact with the ground and with their neighbors, far more contact than high-rise living permits. Second, people want an outdoor garden or yard. This is among the most common reasons for their rejecting apartment living. And third, people crave for variation and uniqueness in their homes, and this desire is almost always constrained by high-rise construction, with its regular facades and identical units.

1. Connection to the ground and to neighbors. The strongest evidence comes from D. M. Fanning (“Families in Flats,” British Medical Journal, November 1967, pp. 382-86). Fanning shows a direct correlation between incidence of mental disorder and high-rise living. These findings are presented in detail in four-story limit (21). High-rise ljving, it appears, has a terrible tendency to leave people alone, stranded, in their apartments. Home life is split away from casual street life by elevators, hallways, and long stairs. The decision to go out for some public life becomes formal and awkward; and unless there is some specific task which brings people out in the world, the tendency is to stay home, alone.

39 HOUSING HILL

Farming also found a striking lack of communication between families in the high-rise flats he studied. Women and children were especially isolated. The women felt they had little reason to take the trip from their apartment to the ground, except to go shopping. They and their children were effectively imprisoned in their apartments, cut off from the ground and from their neighbors.

Contact is impossible.

It seems as if the ground, the common ground between houses, is the medium through which people are able to make contact with one another and with themselves. Living on the ground, the yards around houses join those of the neighbors, and, in the best arrangements, they also adjoin neighborhood byways. Under these conditions it is easy and natural to meet with people. Children playing in the yard, the flowers in the garden, or just the weather outside provide endless topics for conversations. This kind of contact is impossible to maintain in high-rise apartments.

2. Private gardens. In the Park Hill survey (J. F. Demors, “Park Hill Survey,” O.A.P._y February 1966, p. 235), about one-third of the high-rise residents interviewed said they missed the chance to putter around in their garden.

The need for a small garden, or some kind of private outdoor space, is fundamental. It is equivalent, at the family scale, to the biological need that a society has to be integrated with its country-

2 1 1

side—city country fingers (3). In all traditional architec tures, wherever building is essentially in the hands of the people, there is some expression of this need. The miniature gardens of Japan, outdoor workshops, roof gardens, courtyards, backyard rose gardens, communal cooking pits, herb gardens—there are thousands of examples. But in modern apartment structures this kind of space is simply not available.

3. Identity of each unit. During the course of a seminar held at the Center for Environmental Structure, Kenneth Radding made the following experiment. He asked people to draw their dream apartment, from the outside, and stuck the drawing on a small piece of cardboard. He then asked them to place the cardboard on a grid representing the facade of a huge apartment house, and asked them to move their “homes” around, until they liked the position they were in. Without fail, people wanted their apartments to be on the edge, of the building, or set off from other units by blank walls. No one wanted his own apartment to be lost in a grid of apartments.

In another survey we visited a nineteen-story apartment building in San Francisco. The building contained 190 apartments each with a balcony. The management had set very rigid restrictions on the use of these balconies—no political posters, no painting, no clothes drying, no mobiles, no barbecues, no tapestries. But even when confined by such restrictions, over half of the residents were still able, in some way, to personalize their balconies with plants in pots, carpets, and furniture. In short, in the face of the most extreme regimentation people try to give their apartments a unique face.

What building form is compatible with these three basic requirements? First of all, to maintain a strong and direct connection to the ground, the building must be no higher than four stories—four-story limit (21). Also, and perhaps more important, we believe that each “house” must be within a few steps of a rather wide and gradual stair that rises directly from the ground. If the stair is open, somewhat rambling, and very gradual, it will be continuous with the street and the life of the street. Furthermore, if we take this need seriously, the stair must be connected at the ground to a piece of land, owned in common

21 2 39 HOUSING HILL

by the residents—this land organized to form a semi-private green.

Concerning the private gardens. They need sunlight and privacy—two requirements hard to satisfy in ordinary balcony arrangements. The terraces must be south-facing, large, and intimately connected to the houses, and solid enough for earth, and bushes, and small trees. This suggests a kind of housing hilly with a gradual slope toward the south and a garage for parking below the “hill.”

And for identity—the only genuine solution to the problem of identity is to let each family gradually build and rebuild its own home on a terraced superstructure. If the floors of this structure are capable of supporting a house and some earth, each unit is free to take its own character and develop its own tiny garden.

Although these requirements bring to mind a form similar to Safdie’s Habitat, it is important to realize that Habitat fails to solve two of the three problem discussed here. It has private gardens; but it fails to solve the problem of connection to the ground—the units are strongly separated from the casual life of the street;—and the mass-produced dwellings are anonymous, far from unique.

The following sketch for an apartment building—originally made for the Swedish community of Marsta, near Stockholm— includes all the essential features of a housing hill.

Afartment building for Marsta, near Stockholm. Therefore:

To build more than 30 dwellings per net acre, or to

213

build housing three or four stories high, build a hill of houses. Build them to form stepped terraces, sloping toward the south, served by a great central open stair which also faces south and leads toward a common garden . . .

parking underneath		stepped terraces
central common stairs

Let people lay out their own houses individually, upon the terraces, just as if they were land—your own home (79). Since each terrace overlaps the one below it, each house has its garden on the house below—roof gardens ( i 18). Leave the central stair open to the air, but give it a roof, in wet or snowy climates— perhaps a glass roof—open stairs (158) j and place the common land right at the bottom of the stair with playgrounds, flowers, and vegetables for everyone—common land (67), connected PLAY (68) , VEGETABLE GARDEN ( I 77) . . . .

214

40 OLD PEOPLE EVERYWHERE**

2 I 5

summary of the language

fix the position of individual buildings on the site, within the complex, one by one, according to the nature of the site, the trees, the sun: this is one of the most important moments in the language j

104. SITE REPAIR

105. SOUTH FACING OUTDOORS

106. POSITIVE OUTDOOR SPACE

107. WINGS OF LIGHT

108. CONNECTED BUILDINGS

109. LONG THIN HOUSE

within the buildings’ wings, lay out the entrances, the gardens, courtyards, roofs, and terraces: shape both the volume of the buildings and the volume of the space between the buildings at the same time—remembering that indoor space and outdoor space, yin and yang, must always get their shape together j

110. MAIN ENTRANCE

111. HALF-HIDDEN GARDEN I 12. ENTRANCE TRANSITION I 13. CAR CONNECTION

I 14. HIERARCHY OF OPEN SPACE I 15. COURTYARDS WHICH LIVE I 16. CASCADE OF ROOFS I 17. SHELTERING ROOF I I 8. ROOF GARDEN

XXVI

. . . when neighborhoods are properly formed they give the people there a cross section of ages and stages of development—identifiable NEIGHBORHOOD (14), LIFE CYCLE (26), HOUSEHOLD ^MIX (35)) however, the old people are so often forgotten and left alone in modern society, that it is necessary to formulate a special pattern which underlines their needs.

Old people need old people, but they also need the young, and young people need contact with the old.

There is a natural tendency for old people to gather together in clusters or communities. But when these elderly communities are too isolated or too large, they damage young and old alike. The young in other parts of town, have no chance of the benefit of older company, and the old people themselves are far too isolated.

Treated like outsiders, the aged have increasingly clustered together for mutual support or simply to enjoy themselves. A now familiar but still amazing phenomenon has sprung up in the past decade: dozens of good-sized new towns that exclude people under 65. Built on cheap, outlying land, such communities offer two-bedroom houses starting at $18,000 plus a refuge from urban violence . . . and generational pressures. (Time, August 3, 1970.)

But the choice the old people have made by moving to these communities and the remarks above are a serious and painful reflection of a very sad state of affairs in our culture. The fact is that contemporary society shunts away old people; and the more shunted away they are, the deeper the rift between the old and young. The old people have no choice but to segregate themselves —they, like anyone else, have pride; they would rather not be with younger people who do not appreciate them, and they feign satisfaction to justify their position.

And the segregation of the old causes the same rift inside each individual life: as old people pass into old age communities their ties with their own past become unacknowledged, lost, and there-

216 40 OLD PEOPLE EVERYWHERE

fore broken. Their youth is no longer alive in their old age—the two become dissociated; their lives are cut in two.

In contrast to the situation today, consider how the aged were respected and needed in traditional cultures:

Some degree of prestige for the aged seems to have been practically universal in all known societies. This is so general, in fact, that it cuts across many cultural factors that have appeared to determine trends in other topics related to age. (The Role of Aged in Primitive Society, Leo W. Simmons, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1945, p. 69.)

More specifically:

. . . Another family relationship of great significance for the aged has been the commonly observed intimate association between the very young and the very old. Frequently they have been left together at home while the able-bodied have gone forth to earn the family living. These oldsters, in their wisdom and experience, have protected and instructed the little ones, while the children, in turn, have acted as the “eyes, ears, hands, and feet” of their feeble old friends. Care of the young has thus very generally provided the aged with a useful occupation and a vivid interest in life during the long dull days of senescence. (Ibid. p. 199.)

Clearly, old people cannot be integrated socially as in traditional cultures unless they are first integrated physically—unless they share the same streets, shops, services, and common land with everyone else. But, at the same time, they obviously need other old people around them; and some old people who are infirm need special services.

And of course old people vary in their need or desire to be among their own age group. The more able-bodied and independent they are, the less they need to be among other old people, and the farther they can be from special medical services. The variation in the amount of care they need ranges from complete nursing care; to semi-nursing care involving house calls once a day or twice a week; to an old person getting some help with shopping, cooking, and cleaning; to an old person being completely independent. Right now, there is no such fine differentia-

217

TOWNS

tion made in the care of old people—very often people who simply need a little help cooking and cleaning are put into rest homes which provide total nursing care, at huge expense to them, their families, and the community. It is a psychologically debilitating situation, and they turn frail and helpless because that is the way they are treated.

We therefore need a way of taking care of old people which provides for the full range of their needs:

1. It must allow them to stay in the neighborhood they know best—hence some old people in every neighborhood.

2. It must allow old people to be together, yet in groups small enough not to isolate them from the younger people in the neighborhood.

3. It must allow those old people who are independent to live independently, without losing the benefits of communality.

4. It must allow those who need nursing care or prepared meals, to get it, without having to go to nursing homes far from the neighborhood.

All these requirements can be solved together, very simply, if every neighborhood contains a small pocket of old people, not concentrated all in one place, but fuzzy at the edges like a swarm of bees. This will both preserve the symbiosis between young and old, and give the old people the mutual support they need within the pockets. Perhaps 20 might live in a central group house, another 10 or 15 in cottages close to this house, but interlaced with other houses, and another 10 to 15 also in cottages, still further from the core, in among the neighborhood, yet always within 100 or 200 yards of the core, so they can easily walk there to play chess, have a meal, or get help from the nurse.

The number 50 comes from Mumford’s argument:

The first thing to be determined is the number of aged people to be accommodated in a neighborhood unit; and the answer to this, I submit, is that the normal age distribution in the community as a whole should be maintained. This means that there should be from five to eight people over sixty-five in every hundred people; so that in a neighborhood unit of, say, six hundred people, there would be between thirty and fifty old people. (Lewis Mumford, The Human Prosfect, New York, 1968, p. 49.)

As for the character of the group house, it might vary from

21 8

40 OLD PEOPLE EVERYWHERE

case to case. In some cases it might be no more than a commune, where people cook together and have part-time help from young girls and boys, or professional nurses. However, about 5 per cent of the nation’s elderly need full-time care. This means that two or three people in every 50 will need complete nursing care. Since a nurse can typically work with six to eight people, this suggests that every second or third neighborhood group house might be equipped with complete nursing care.

Therefore:

Create dwellings for some 50 old people in every neighborhood. Place these dwellings in three rings . . .

1. A central core with cooking and nursing provided.

2. Cottages near the core.

3. Cottages further out from the core, mixed among the other houses of the neighborhood, but never more than 200 yards from the core.

. . . in such a way that the 50 houses together form a single coherent swarm, with its own clear center, but interlocked at its periphery with other ordinary houses of the neighborhood.

"S

/

A

\
	nearby cottages

further cottages

*\ »•

4* 4*

Treat the core like any group house; make all the cottages, both those close to and those further away, small—old age

219

cottage (155), some of them perhaps connected to the larger family houses in the neighborhood—the family (75); provide every second or third core with proper nursing facilities; somewhere in the orbit of the old age pocket, provide the kind of work which old people can manage best—especially teaching and looking after tiny children—network of learning (18), children’s home (86), settled work (156), vegetable

GARDEN ( 177) . . . .

220

between the house clusters_} around the centers_} and especially in the boundaries between neighborhoods_} encourage the formation of work communities;

41. WORK COMMUNITY

42. INDUSTRIAL RIBBON

43. UNIVERSITY AS A MARKETPLACE

44. LOCAL TOWN HALL

45. NECKLACE OF COMMUNITY PROJECTS

46. MARKET OF MANY SHOPS

47. HEALTH CENTER

48. HOUSING IN BETWEEN

221

41 WORK COMMUNITY**

222

. . . according to the pattern scattered work (9), work is entirely decentralized and woven in and out of housing areas. The effect of scattered work—can be increased piecemeal, by building individual work communities, one by one, in the boundaries between the neighborhoods; these work communities will then help to form the boundaries—subculture boundary (13), neighborhood boundary (15)—and above all in the boundaries, they will help to form activity nodes (30).

If you spend eight hours of your day at work, and eight hours at home, there is no reason why your workplace should be any less of a community than your home.

When someone tells you where he “lives,” he is always talking about his house or the neighborhood his house is in. It sounds harmless enough. But think what it really means. Why should the people of our culture choose to use the word “live,” which, on the face of it applies to every moment of our waking lives, and apply it only to a special portion of our lives—that part associated with our families and houses. The implication is straightforward. The people of our culture believe that they are less alive when they are working than when they are at home; and we make this distinction subtly clear, by choosing to keep the word “live” only for those places in our lives where we are not working. Anyone who uses the phrase “where do you live” in its everyday sense, accepts as his own the widespread cultural awareness of the fact that no one really “lives” at his place of work—there is no song or music there, no love, no food—that he is not alive while working, not living, only toiling away, and being dead.

As soon as we understand this situation it leads at once to outrage. Why should we accept a world in which eight hours of the day are “dead”; why shall we not create a world in which our work is as much part of life, as much alive, as anything we do at home with our family and with our friends?

This problem is discussed in other patterns—scattered work (9), SELF-GOVERNING WORKSHOPS AND OFFICES (80). Here We

TOWNS

focus on the implications which this problem has for the physical and social nature of the area in which a workplace sits. If a person spends eight hours a day working in a certain area, and the nature of his work, its social character, and its location, are all chosen to make sure that he is living, not merely earning money, then it is certainly essential that the area immediately around his place of work be a community, just like a neighborhood but oriented to the pace and rhythms of work, instead of the rhythms of the family.

For workplaces to function as communities, five relationships are critical:

1. Workplaces must not be too scattered, nor too agglomerated, but clustered in groups of about 75.

We know from scattered work (9) that workplaces should be decentralized, but they should not be so scattered that a single workplace is isolated from others. On the other hand, they should not be so agglomerated that a single workplace is lost in a sea of others. The workplaces should therefore be grouped to form strongly identifiable communities. The communities need to be small enough so that one can know most of the people working in them, at least by sight—and big enough to support as many amenities for the workers as possible—lunch counters, local sports, shops, and so on. We guess the right size may be between 8 and 20 establishments.

2. The workplace community contains a mix of manual jobs, desk jobs, craft jobs, selling, and so forth.

Most people today work in areas which are specialized: medical buildings, car repair, advertising, warehousing, financial, etc. This kind of segregation leads to isolation from other types of work and other types of people, leading in turn to less concern, respect, and understanding of them. We believe that a world where people are socially responsible can only come about where there is a value intrinsic to every job, where there is dignity associated with all work. This can hardly come about when we are so segregated from people who do different kinds of work from us.

3. There is a common piece of land within the work community, which ties the individual workshops and offices together.

A shared street does a little to tie individual houses and places together; but a shared piece of common land does a great deal

41 WORK COMMUNITY

more. If the workplaces are grouped around a common courtyard where people can sit, play volleyball, eat lunches, it will help the contact and community among the workers.

4. The work community is interlaced with the larger community in which it is located.

A work community, though forming a core community by itself, cannot work well in complete isolation from the surrounding community. This is already discussed to some extent in scattered work (9) and men and women (27). In addition, both work community and residential community can gain by sharing facilities and services—restaurants, cafes, libraries. Thus it makes sense for the work community to be open to the larger community with shops and cafes at the seam between them.

5. Finally, it is necessary that the common land, or court-yards, exist at two distinct and separate levels. On the one hand, the courtyards for common table tennis, volleyball, need half-a-dozen workgroups around them at the most—more would swamp them. On the other hand, the lunch counters and laundries and barbershops need more like 20 or 30 workgroups to survive. For this reason the work community needs two levels of clustering.

Therefore:

eating places

Build or encourage the formation of work communities —each one a collection of smaller clusters of workplaces which have their own courtyards, gathered round a larger common square or common courtyard which contains shops and lunch counters. The total work community should have no more than 10 or 20 workplaces in it.

summary of the language

when the major parts of buildings and the outdoor areas have been given their rough shape, it is the right time to give more detailed attention to the paths and squares between the buildings 5

119. ARCADES

120. PATHS AND GOALS

121. PATH SHAPE

122. BUILDING FRONTS

123. PEDESTRIAN DENSITY

124. ACTIVITY POCKETS

125. STAIR SEATS

126. SOMETHING ROUGHLY IN THE MIDDLE

now, with the paths fixed, we come back to the buildings: within the various wings of any one building, work out the fundamental gradients of space, and decide how the movement will connect the spaces in the gradients;

127. INTIMACY GRADIENT

128. INDOOR SUNLIGHT

129. COMMON AREAS AT THE HEART

130. ENTRANCE ROOM

131. THE FLOW THROUGH ROOMS

132. SHORT PASSAGES

133. STAIRCASE AS A STAGE

134. ZEN VIEW

135. TAPESTRY OF LIGHT AND DARK

XXV11

Make the square at the heart of the community a public square with public paths coming through it—small public squares (6i); either in this square, or in some attached space, place opportunities for sports—local sports (72); make sure that the entire community is always within three minutes’ walk of an accessible green (60) ; lay out the individual smaller courtyards in such a way that people naturally gather there—courtyards which live (11 5) ; keep the workshops small—self-governing workshops and offices (80); encourage communal cooking and eating over and beyond the lunch counters—street CAFE (88), FOOD STANDS (93), COMMUNAL EATING (147). . . .

42 INDUSTRIAL RIBBON*

227

. . . in a city where work is decentralized by scattered work (9), the placing of industry is of particular importance since it usually needs a certain amount of concentration. Like work communities (41), the industry can easily be placed to help in the formation of the larger boundaries between subcultures—subculture boundary (13).

Exaggerated zoning laws separate industry from the rest of urban life completely, and contribute to the plastic unreality of sheltered residential neighborhoods.

It is true, obviously, that industry creates smoke, smells, noise, and heavy truck traffic; and it is therefore necessary to prevent the heaviest industry, especially, from interfering with the calm and safety of the places where people live.

But it is also true that in the modern city industry gets treated like a disease. The areas where it exists are assumed to be dirty and derelict. They are kept to the “other side of the tracks,” swept under the rug. And people forget altogether that the things which surround them in their daily lives—bread, chemicals, cars, oil, gaskets, radios, chairs—are all made in these forbidden industrial zones. Under these conditions it is not surprising that people treat life as an unreal charade, and forget the simplest realities and facts of their existence.

Since the 1930’s various efforts have been made, on behalf of the workers, to make factories green and pleasant. This social welfare approach to the nature of industries is once again unreal, in the opposite direction. A workshop, where things are being made, is not a garden or a hospital. The gardens which surround the new industrial “parks” are more for show than for the workers anyway since a few small inner courts or gardens would be far more useful to the workers themselves. And the contribution of an industrial park to the social and emotional life of the surrounding city is almost nil.

What is needed is a form of industry which is small enough so that it does not need to be so sharply segregated; genuine, so that it seems like a workshop, because it is a workshop; placed

42 INDUSTRIAL RIBBON

Tsocial welfare “green” industrial 'park.

in such a way that the truck traffic which it generates does not endanger nearby neighborhoods; and formed along the edge of neighborhoods so that it is not a dangerous, forgotten zone, but so that it is a real part of life, accessible to children from the surrounding houses, woven into the fabric of city life, in a way that properly reflects its huge importance in the scheme of things.

But many industries are not small. They need large areas to function properly. A survey of planned industrial districts shows that 71.2 per cent of the industries require 0 to 5.0 acres, 13.6 per cent require 5 to 10 acres, and 9.9 per cent require 10 to 25 acres. (Robert E. Boley, Industrial Districts Restudied: An Analysis of Characteristics, Urban Land Institute, Technical Bulletin No. 41, 1961.) These industries can only fit into a neighborhood BOUNDARY (15) Or SUBCULTURE BOUNDARY (13) if the boundary is wide enough. Ribbons whose width varies between 200 and 500 feet, with sites varying in length between 200 and 2000 feet, will be able to provide the necessary range of one to 25-acre sites in compact blocks, and are still narrow enough to keep communities on opposite sides of the ribbon reasonably connected.

The industrial ribbons require truck access and some rail transport. Truck roads and rail spurs should always be located in the center of ^fhe ribbon, so that the edges of the ribbon remain open

Truck traffic from an industrial area to a nearby freeway destroys a neighborhood.

to the community. Even more important, the ribbons must be placed so that they do not generate a heavy concentration of dangerous and noisy truck traffic through neighborhoods. Since most truck traffic comes to and from the freeways, this means that the industrial ribbons must be placed fairly near to ring roads (17).

Therefore:

Place industry in ribbons, between 200 and 500 feet wide, which form the boundaries between communities. Break these ribbons into long blocks, varying in area between 1 and 25 acres; and treat the edge of every ribbon as a place where people from nearby communities can benefit from the offshoots of the industrial activity.

Place the ribbons near enough to ring roads (17) so that trucks can pass directly from the ribbons to the ring road, without having to pass through any other intermediate areas. Develop the internal layout of the industrial ribbon like any other work community, though slightly more spread out—work community (41). Place the important buildings of each industry, the “heart” of the plant, toward the edge of the ribbon to form usable streets and outdoor spaces—positive outdoor space (106), building fronts (1 22).

43 UNIVERSITY AS A MARKETPLACE

231

. . . the network of learning (18) has established the importance of a whole society devoted to the learning process with decentralized opportunities for learning. The network of learning can be greatly helped by building a university, which treats the learning process as a normal part of adult life, for all the people in society.

Concentrated, cloistered universities, with closed admission policies and rigid procedures which dictate who may teach a course, kill opportunities for learning.

The original universities in the middle ages were simply collections of teachers who attracted students because they had something to offer. They were marketplaces of ideas, located all over the town, where people could shop around for the kinds of ideas and learning which made sense to them. By contrast, the isolated and over-administered university of today kills the variety and intensity of the different ideas at the university and also limits the student’s opportunity to shop for ideas.

To re-create this kind of academic freedom and the opportunity for exchange and growth of ideas two things are needed.

First, the social and physical environment must provide a setting which encourages rather than discourages individuality and freedom of thought. Second, the environment must provide a setting which encourages the student to see for himself which ideas make sense—a setting which gives him the maximum opportunity and exposure to a great variety of ideas, so that he can make up his mind for himself.

The image which most clearly describes this kind of setting is the image of the traditional marketplace, where hundreds of tiny stalls, each one developing some specialty and unique flavor which can attract people by its genuine quality, are so arranged that a potential buyer can circulate freely, and examine the wares before he buys.

232

43 UNIVERSITY AS A MARKETPLACE

What would it mean to fashion the university after this model?

1. Anyone, can take a course. To begin with, in a university marketplace there are no admission procedures. Anyone, at any age, may come forward and seek to take a class. In effect, the “course catalog” of the university is published and circulated at large, in the newspapers and on radio, and posted in public places throughout the region.

2. Anyone can give a course. Similarly, in a university marketplace, anyone can come forward and offer a course. There is no hard and fast distinction between teachers and the rest of the citizenry. If people come forward to take the course, then it is established. There will certainly be groups of teachers banding together and offering interrelated classes; and teachers may set prerequisities and regulate enrollment however they see fit. But, like a true marketplace, the students create the demand. If over a period of time no one comes forward to take a professor’s course, then he must change his offering or find another way to make a living.

Many courses, once they are organized, can meet in homes and meeting rooms all across the town. But some will need more space or special equipment, and all the classes will need access to libraries and various other communal facilities. The university marketplace, then, needs a physical structure to support its social structure.

Certainly, a marketplace could never have the form of an isolated campus. Rather it would tend to be open and public, woven through the city, perhaps with one or two streets'where university facilities are concentrated.

In an early version of this pattern, written expressly for the University of Oregon in Eugene, we described in detail the physical setting which we believe complements the marketplace of ideas. We advised:

Make the university a collection of small buildings, situated along pedestrian paths, each containing one or two educational projects. Make all the horizontal circulation among these projects, in the public domain, at ground floor. This means that all projects open directly to a pedestrian path, and that the upper floors of buildings are connected directly to the ground, by stairs and entrances. Connect all the pedestrian paths, so that, like a marketplace, they form one major pedestrian system, with many entrances and openings off it. The over-

233

all result of this pattern, is that the environment becomes a collection of relatively low buildings, opening off a major system of pedestrian paths, each building containing a series of entrances and staircases, at about 50 foot intervals.

We still believe that this image of the university, as a marketplace scattered through the town, is correct. Most of these details are given by other patterns, in this book: building complex (95), pedestrian street (ioo), arcades (119), and open

STAIRS (158).

Finally, how should a university marketplace be administered? We don’t know. Certainly a voucher system where everyone has equal access to payment vouchers seems sensible. And some technique for balancing payment to class size is required, so teachers are not simply paid according to how many students they enroll. Furthermore, some kind of evaluation technique is needed, so that reliable information on courses and teachers filters out to the towns people.

There are several experiments going forward in higher education today which may help to solve these administrative questions. The Open University of England, the various “free” universities, such as Heliotrope in San Francisco, the 20 branches of the University Without Walls all over the United States, the university extension programs, which gear their courses entirely to working people—they are all examples of institutions experimenting with different aspects of the marketplace idea.

Therefore:

Establish the university as a marketplace of higher education. As a social conception this means that the university is open to people of all ages, on a full-time, part-time, or course by course basis. Anyone can offer a class. Anyone can take a class. Physically, the university marketplace has a central crossroads where its main buildings and offices are, and the meeting rooms and labs ripple out from this crossroads—at first concentrated in small buildings along pedestrian streets and then gradually becoming more dispersed and mixed with the town.

marketplace of ideas

» (2! p

open admission

scattered facilities

^ university crossroads

Give the university a promenade (31) at its central crossroads; and around the crossroads cluster the buildings along streets—building complex (95), pedestrian street (ioo). Give this central area access to quiet greens—quiet backs (59) ; and a normal distribution of housing—housing in between (48); as for the classes, wherever possible let them follow the model of master and apprentices (83). . . .

235

SUMMARY OF THE LANGUAGE

within the framework of the wings and their internal gradients of space and movement, define the most important areas and rooms. First, for a house;

136. couple’s realm

137. children’s realm

then the same for offices, workshops, and public buildings;

add those small outbuildings which must be slightly independent from the main structure, and put in the access from the upper stories to the street and gardens;

XXVI11

44- LOCAL TOWN HALL*

236

. . . according to community of 7000 (12), the political and economic life of the city breaks down into small, self-governing communities. In this case, the process of local government needs a physical place of work; and the design and placing of this physical place of work can help to create and to sustain the community of 7000 by acting as its physical and social focus.

Local government of communities and local control by the inhabitants, will only happen if each community has its own physical town hall which forms the nucleus of its political activity.

We have argued, in mosaic of subcultures (8), community of 7000 (12), and identifiable neighborhood (14), that every city needs to be made of self-governing groups, which exist at two different levels, the communities witli populations of 5000 to 10,000 and the neighborhoods with populations of 200 to 1000.

These groups will only have the political force to carry out their own, locally determined plans, if they have a share of the taxes which their inhabitants generate, and if the people in the groups have a genuine, daily possibility of access to the local government which represents them. Both require that each group has its own seat of government, no matter how modest, where the people of the neighborhood feel comfortable, and where they know that they can get results.

This calls up a physical image of city government which is quite the opposite of the huge city halls that have been built in the last 75 years. A local town hall would contain two basic features:

I. It is community territory for the group it serves; it is made in a way which invites people in for service, spontaneously, to debate policy, and the open space around the building is shaped to sustain people gathering and lingering.

TOWNS

2. It is located at the heart of the local community and is within walking distance of everyone it serves.

i. The town hall as community territory.

The weakness of community government is due in part to the kinds of policies created and maintained by the city hall bureaucracy. And we believe this situation is largely supported and bolstered by the physical nature of city hall. In other words, the physical existence of a city hall undermines local community government, even where the city hall staff is sympathetic to “neighborhood participation.”

The key to the problem lies in the experience of powerlessness at the community level. When a man goes to city hall to take action on a neighborhood or community issue, he is at once on the defensive: the building and the staff of city hall serve the entire city; his problem is very small beside the problems of the city as a whole. And besides, everyone is busy-busy and unfamiliar. He is asked to fill out paper forms and make appointments, though perhaps the connection between these forms and appointments and his problem are not very clear. Soon the people in the neighborhoods feel more and more remote from city hall, from the center of decision-making and from the decisions themselves which influence their lives. Quickly the syndrome of powerlessness grows.

In an earlier publication, we presented a body of evidence to substantiate the growth of this syndrome (A Pattern Language Which Generates Multi-Service Centers, Center for Environmental Structure, Berkeley, 1968, pp. 80-87). There we discovered that centralized service programs reached very few of the people in their target areas; the staff of these centers quickly took on tire red tape mentality, even where they were chosen specifically to support neighborhood programs; and, most damaging of all, the centers themselves were seen as alien places, and the experience of using them was, on the whole, debilitating to the people.

Like all syndromes, this one can only be broken if it is attacked on its several fronts simultaneously. This means, for example, organizing neighborhoods and communities to take control of the functions that concern them; revising city charters to grant

44 LOCAL TOWN HALL

power to local groups; and making places, in communities and neighborhoods, that act as home bases for the co?isolidation of this power—the local town halls.

What might these local town halls be like if they are to be effective in breaking down the syndrome of powerlessness?

The evidence shows that people can and will articulate their needs if given the proper setting and means. Creating this setting goes hand in hand with community organization. If the local town hall is gradually to become a source of real neighborhood power, it must help the process of community organization. This means, essentially, that the building be built around the process of community organization, and that the place be clearly recognizable as community territory.

When we translate the idea of community organization and community territory into physical terms, they yield two components: an arena and a zone of community projects.

The community needs a public forum, equipped with sound system, benches, walls to put up notices, where people are free to gather; a place which belongs to the community where people would naturally come whenever they think something should be done about something. We call this public forum the arena.

And the community needs a place where people can have access to storefronts, work space, meeting rooms, office equipment. Once a group is ready to move, it takes typewriters, duplicating machines, telephones, etc., to carry through with a project and develop broad based community support—and this in turn needs cheap and readily accessible office space. We call this space the community projects zone—see necklace of community projects (45) for details.

2. The location of local town halls.

If these local town halls are to be successful in drawing people in, the question of their location must be taken seriously. From earlier work on the location of multi-service centers, we are convinced that town halls can die if they are badly located: twenty times as many people drop into commwiity centers when they are located near major intersections as when they are buried in the middle of residential blocks.

Here, for example, is a table which shows the number of

239

TOWNS

Number of people Number of people

people who dropped In at a service center while it was located on a residential street, versus the number of people who dropped in after it was relocated on a major commercial street, close to a main pedestrian intersection.

dropping in, with appointments, per day per day

Before the move i—2 15—20

Two months after the move 15—20 about 50

Six months after the move about 40 about 50

The details of this investigation are given in A Pattern Language Which Generates Multi-Service Centers (pp. 70—73). The conclusion reached there, is that community centers can afford to be within a block of the major pedestrian intersections, but if they are farther away, they are virtually dead as centers of local service.

This information must be interpreted to suit the different scales of neighborhood and community. We imagine, in a neighborhood of 5 00, the neighborhood town hall would be quite small and informal; perhaps not even a separate building at all, but a room with an adjoining outdoor room, on an important corner of the neighborhood. In a community of 7000, something more is required: a building the size of a large house, with an outdoor area developed as a forum and meeting place, located on the community’s main promenade.

Therefore:

To make the political control of local functions real, establish a small town hall for each community of 7000, and even for each neighborhood; locate it near the busiest intersection in the community. Give the building three parts: an arena for public discussion, public services around the arena, and space to rent out to ad hoc community projects.

public services C^| ₀

-° <0„,

0

arena j

0 ' "

/

⁵ M . .

community projects ❖ ❖ ❖

Arrange the arena so that it forms the heart of a community-crossroads; and make it small, so that a crowd can easily gather there—activity nodes (30), small public squares (61), pedestrian density (I 2.3). Keep all the public services around this square as small as possible—small services without red tape (81) ; and provide ample space for the community projects, in a ring around the building, so that they form the outer face of the town hall—necklace of community projects (45). . . .

241

45 NECKLACE OF COMMUNITY PROJECTS

242

. . . local town hall (44) calls for small centers of local government at the heart of every community. This pattern embellishes the local town hall and other public institutions like

it-UNIVERSITY AS A MARKETPLACE (43) and HEALTH CENTER

(47)—with a ground for community action.

-!* ❖

The local town hall will not be an honest part of the community which lives around it, unless it is itself surrounded by all kinds of small community activities and projects, generated by the people for themselves.

A lively process of community self-government depends on an endless series of ad hoc political and service groups, functioning freely, each with a proper chance to test its ideas before the townspeople. The spatial component of this idea is crucial: this process will be stymied if people cannot get started in an office on a shoestring.

We derive the geometry of this pattern from five requirements:

1. Small, grass roots movements, unpopular at their inception, play a vital role in society. They provide a critical opposition to established ideas; their presence is a direct correlate of the right to free speech; a basic part of the self-regulation of a successful society, which will generate counter movements whenever things get off the track. Such movements need a place to manifest themselves, in a way which puts their ideas directly into the public domain. At this writing, a quick survey of the East Bay shows about 30 or 40 bootstrap groups that are suffering for lack of such a place: for example, Alcatraz Indians, Bangla Desh Relief, Solidarity Films, Tenant Action Project, November 7th Movement, Gay Legal Defense, No on M, People’s Translation Service. . . .

2. But as a rule these groups are small and have very little money. To nourish this kind of activity, the community must provide minimal space to any group of this sort, rent free, with some limit on the duration of the lease. The space must be like a

243

TOWNS

small storefront and have typewriters, duplicating machines, and telephones; and access to a meeting room.

3. To encourage the atmosphere of honest debate, these storefront spaces must be near the town hall, the mam crossroads of public life. If they are scattered across the town, away from the main town hall, they cannot seriously contend with the powers that be.

4. The space must be highly visible. It must be built in a way which lets the group get their ideas across, to people on the street. And it must be physically organized to undermine the natural tendency town governments have to wall themselves in and isolate themselves from the community once they are in power.

5. Finally, to bring these groups into natural contact with the community, the fabric of storefronts should be built to include some of the stable shops and services that the community needs—barbershop, cafe, laundromat.

These five requirements suggest a necklace of rather open storefront spaces around the local town hall. This necklace of spaces is a physical embodiment of the political process in an open society: everyone has access to equipment, space to mount a campaign, and the chance to get their ideas into the public arena.

Therefore:

	(WK-
.0

Allow the growth of shop-size spaces around the local town hall, and any other appropriate community building. Front these shops on a busy path, and lease them for a minimum rent to ad hoc community groups for political work, trial services, research, and advocate groups. No ideological restrictions.

45 NECKLACE OF COMMUNITY PROJECTS

Make each shop smali, compact, and easily accessible like individually owned shops (87) j build small public spaces for loitering amongst them—public outdoor room (69). Use them to form the building edge—building fronts (122), building edge (i6o), and keep them open to the street—opening to the street (165). . . .

245

prepare to knit the inside of the building to the outside, by treating the edge between the two as a place in its own right, and making human details there;

decide on the arrangement of the gardens, and the places in the gardens;

46 MARKET OF MANY SHOPS**

246

. . . we have proposed that shops be widely decentralized and placed in such a way that they are most accessible to the communities which use them—web of shopping (19). The largest groups of shops are arranged to form pedestrian streets or shopping streets (32) which will almost always need a market to survive. This pattern describes the form and economic character of markets.

It is natural and convenient to want a market where all the different foods and household goods you need can be bought under a single roof. But when the market has a single management, like a supermarket, the foods are bland, and there is no joy in going there.

It is true that the large supermarkets do have a great variety of foods. But this “variety” is still centrally purchased, centrally warehoused, and still has the staleness of mass merchandise. In addition, there is no human contact left, only rows of shelves and then a harried encounter with the check-out man who takes your money.

The only way to get the human contact back, and the variety of food, and all the love and care and wisdom about individual foods which shopkeepers who know what they are selling can bring to it, is to create those markets once again in which individual owners sell different goods, from tiny stalls, under a common roof.

As it stands, supermarkets are likely to get bigger and bigger, to conglomerate with other industries, and to go to all lengths to dehumanize the experience of the marketplace. Horn and Hardart, for example, have been contemplating this scheme:

. . . the customer either drives her car or walks onto a moving ramp, is conveyed decorously through the whole store, selects her groceries by viewing samples displayed in lighted wall panels (or unlocking the cases with a special key or her credit card), and chooses her meat and produce via closed circuit TV. She then drives around to a separate warehouse area to collect her order, paid for by a uni-

versal credit card system. . . . Most of the people would be invisible.

. . . (Jennifer Cross, The Supermarket Trap_y New York: Berkeley Medallion, 1971).

Now contrast this with the following description of an old-fashioned market place in San Francisco:

If you visit the Market regularly you come to have favorite stalls, like the one with the pippin and Hauer apples from Watsonville. The farmer looks at each apple as he chooses it and places it in the bag, reminding you to keep them in a cool place so they will remain crisp and sweet. If you display interest, he tells you with pride about the orchard they come from and how they were grown and cared for, his blue eyes meeting yours. His English is spoken with a slight Italian accent so you wonder about the clear blue eyes, light brown hair and long-boned body until lie tells you about the part of northern Italy where he was born.

There is a handsome black man offering small mountains of melons where the stalls end. Tell him you are not enough of an expert to choose one you would like to have perfect for the day after tomorrow, and he will not only pick one out that he assures you will be just right (as it turns out to be), but gives you a lesson in choosing your next melon, whether cranshaw, honeydew or watermelon, wherever you may happen to buy it. He cares that you will always get a good one and enjoy it. (“The Farmers Go to Market,” California Living, San Francisco Chronicle Sunday Magazine, February 6, 1972.)

There is no doubt that this is far more human and enlivening than the supermarket conveyor belt. The critical question lies with the economics of the operation. Is there a reasonable economic basis for a marketplace of many shops? Or are markets ruled out by the efficiencies of the supermarket?

There do not seem to be any economic obstacles more serious than those which accompany the start of any business. The major problem is one of coordination—coordination of individual shops to form one coherent market and coordination of many similar shops, from several markets, to make bulk purchase arrangements.

If individual shops are well located, they can operate competitively, at profit margins of up to 5 per cent of sales (“Expenses in Retail Business,” National Cash Register, Dayton, Ohio, p. 15). According to National Cash Register figures, this profit margin stays the same, regardless of size, for all convenience food stores. The small stores are often undercut by supermarkets because they are located by themselves, and therefore cannot offer shoppers

248

46 MARKET OF MANY SHOPS

the same variety at one stop, as the supermarket. However, if many of these small shops are clustered and centrally located, and together they offer a variety comparable to the supermarket, then they can compete effectively with the chain supermarkets.

The one efficiency that chain stores do maintain is the efficiency of bulk purchase. But even this can be offset if groups of similar shops, all over the town, coordinate their needs and set up bulk purchase arrangements. For example, in the Bay Area there are a number of flower vendors running their business from small carts on the street. Although each vendor manages his own affairs independently, all the vendors go in together to buy their flowers. They gain enormously by purchasing their flowers in bulk and undersell the established florists three to one.

Of course, it is difficult for a market of many shops to get started—it is hard to find a place and hard to finance it. We propose a very rough and simple structure in the beginning, that can be filled in and improved over time. The market in the photo, in Lima, Peru, began with nothing more than freestanding columns and aisles. The shops—most of them no more than six feet by nine—were built up gradually between the columns.

A market in Peru . . .

began with nothing more than columns.

249

TOWNS

A spectacular example of a simple wood structure that has been modified and enlarged over the years is the Pike Place Market in Seattle, Washington.
The Tike Place Market—a market of many shops in Seattle.

Therefore:

Instead of modern supermarkets, establish frequent marketplaces, each one made up of many smaller shops which are autonomous and specialized (cheese, meat, grain, fruit, and so on). Build the structure of the market as a minimum, which provides no more than a roof, columns which define aisles, and basic services. Within this structure allow the different shops to create their own environment, according to their individual taste and needs.

250

*!• •$*

Make the aisles wide enough for small delivery carts and for a dense throng of pedestrians—perhaps 6 to I 2 feet wide—building thoroughfare (iOi) ; keep the stalls extremely small so that the rent is low—perhaps no more than six feet by nine feet— shops which need more space can occupy two—individually owned shops (87); define the stalls with columns at the corners only—columns at the corners (212); perhaps even let the owners make roofs for themselves—canvas roofs (244) ; connect the aisles with the outside so that the market is a direct continuation of the pedestrian paths in the city just around it—pedestrian street (100). . . .

47 health center*

. . . the explicit recognition of the life cycle as the basis for every individual life will do a great deal to help people’s health in the community—life cycle (26) ; this pattern describes the more specific institutions which help people to care for themselves and their health.

More than 90 per cent of the people walking about in an ordinary neighborhood are unhealthy, judged by simple biological criteria. This ill health cannot be cured by hospitals or medicine.

Hospitals put the emphasis on sickness. They are enormously expensive; they are inconvenient because they are too centralized; and they tend to create sickness, rather than cure it, because doctors get paid when people are sick.

By contrast, in traditional Chinese medicine, people pay the doctor only when they are healthy; when they are sick, he is obliged to treat them, without payment. The doctors have incentives to keep people well.

A system of health care which is actually capable of keeping people healthy, in both mind and body, must put its emphasis on health, not sickness. It must therefore be physically decentralized so that it is as close as possible to people’s everyday activities. And it must be able to encourage people in daily practices that lead to health. The core of the solution, as far as we can see, must be a system of small, widely distributed, health centers, which encourage physical activities—swimming, dancing, sports, and fresh air—and provide medical treatment only as an incidental side of these activities.

There is converging evidence and speculation in the health

252

care literature that health centers with these characteristics, organized according to the philosophy of health maintenance, are critical. (See, for example: William H. Glazier, “The Task of Medicine,” Scientific American, Vol. 228, No. 4, April 1973, pp. 13—17; and Milton Roemer, “Nationalized Medicine for America,” Transaction, September 1971, p. 31.)

We know of several attempts to develop health care programs which are in line with this proposal. In most of the cases, though, the programs fall short in their hopes because, despite their good intentions, they still tend to cater to the sick, they do not work to maintain health. Take, for example, the so-called “community mental health centers” encouraged by the United States National Institute of Mental Health during the late 1960’s. On paper, these centers are intended to encourage health, not cure sickness.

In practice it is a very different story. We visited one of the most advanced, in San Anselmo, California. The patients sit around all day long; their eyes are glazed; they are half-enthusi-astically doing “clay therapy” or “paint therapy.” One patient came up to us and said, “Doctor,” his eyes shining with happiness, “this is a wonderful mental health center; it is the very best one I have ever been in.” In short, the patients are kept as patients; they understand themselves to be patients; in certain cases they even revel in their role as patients. They have no useful occupation, no work, nothing useful they can show at the end of a day, nothing to be proud of. The center, for all its intentions to be human, in fact reinforces the patients’ idea of their own sickness and encourages the behavior of sickness, even while it is preaching and advocating health.

The same is true for the Kaiser-Permanente program in California. The Kaiser hospitals have been hailed in a recent article as “ones which shift the emphasis away from treatment of illness and toward the maintenance of health (William H. Glazier, “The Task of Medicine”). Members of Kaiser are entitled to a multi-phasic examination yearly, intended to give every member a complete picture of the state of his health. But the conception of health which is created by this multi-phasic program is still “freedom from sickness.” It is essentially negative. There is no effort made toward the positive creation and maintenance of actual, blooming, health. And besides, the Kaiser Center

TOWNS

is still nothing but a giant hospital. People are treated as numbers; the center is so large and concentrated that the doctors cannot possibly see their patients as people in their natural communities. They see them as patients.

The only health center we know which actually devoted itself to health instead of sickness was the famous Peckham Health Center in England. The Peckham Center was a club, run by two doctors, focused on a swimming pool, a dance floor, and a cafe. In addition, there were doctors’ offices, and it was understood that families—never individuals—would receive periodic check-ups as part of their activities around the swimming and dancing. Under these conditions, people used the center regularly, during the day and at night. The question of their health became fused with the ordinary life of the community, and this set the stage for a most extraordinary kind of health care.

For example, it seems that many of the mothers in working-class pre-war England, were ashamed of their own bodies. This shame reached such proportions that they were ashamed of suckling and holding their own babies, and in many cases they actually did not want their babies as a result. The Peckham Center was able to dismantle this syndrome entirely by its emphasis on health. The program of swimming and dancing, coupled with the family checkups, allowed women to become proud of their own bodies; they no longer felt afraid of their own newborn babies, no longer felt shame about their bodies; the babies felt wanted; and the incidence of emotional disturbance and childhood psychosis among the children in later years was drastically reduced within the Peckham population, starting exactly from the year when the health center began its operation.

This kind of profound biological connection between physical health, family life, and emotional welfare was truly the beginning of a new era in human biology. It is described, beautifully, and at length, by two doctors from Peckham Center (Innes Pearse and Lucy Crocker, The Peckham Experiment, A Study in the Living Structure of Society, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1946). Only when biological ideas of this depth and power are taken seriously will it be possible to have real health centers, instead of sickness centers.

47 HEALTH CENTER

Therefore:

Gradually develop a network of small health centers, perhaps one per community of 7000, across the city; each equipped to treat everyday disease—both mental and physical, in children and adults—but organized essentially around a functional emphasis on those recreational and educational activities which help keep people in good health, like swimming and dancing.

small centers

❖ *t*

Keep the medical teams small and independent—small services without red tape (81), but coordinated with each other and other clinics, like birth places (65)—throughout the town. Give each center some functions that fuse with the ordinary course of local work and recreation: swimming pool, workshops, sauna, gym, vegetable garden, greenhouse. But don’t force these facilities to form a continuous “health park”—knit them together loosely with other parts of the town—housing in between (48), local sports (72), adventure playcround (73), home workshop (157), vegetable garden (177). Perhaps the most important subsidiary pattern for helping people to keep healthy is the opportunity for swimming; ideally, try and put a swimming pool on every block—still water (71). . . .

255

SUMMARY OF THE LANGUAGE

172. GARDEN GROWING WILD

173. GARDEN WALL

174. TRELLISED WALK

175. GREENHOUSE

176. GARDEN SEAT

177. VEGETABLE GARDEN

178. COMPOST

go back to the inside of the building and attach the necessary minor rooms and alcoves to complete the main rooms j

179. ALCOVES

180. WINDOW PLACE I 8 I. THE FIRE

182. EATING ATMOSPHERE

183. WORKSPACE ENCLOSURE

184. COOKING LAYOUT

185. SITTING CIRCLE

186. COMMUNAL SLEEPING

187. MARRIAGE BED

188. BED ALCOVE

189. DRESSING ROOM

fine tune the shape and size of rooms and alcoves to make them precise and buildable;

190. CEILING HEIGHT VARIETY

XXX

48 HOUSING IN BETWEEN**

256

. . . most housing is in residential neighborhoods, and in the dusters within neighborhoods—identifiable neighborhood (14), house cluster (37); and according to our patterns these housing areas need to be separated by boundaries which contain public land and work communities—subculture boundary (13), NEIGHBORHOOD BOUNDARY (15), WORK COMMUNITY (41). But even these work communities, and boundaries, and shopping streets, must contain houses which have people living in them.

Wherever there is a sharp separation between residential and nonresidential parts of town, the nonresidential areas will quickly turn to slums.

The personal rhythms of maintenance and repair are central to the well being of any part of a community, because it is only these rhythms which keep up a steady sequence of adaptations and corrections in the organization of the whole. Slums happen when these rhythms break down.

Now in a town, the processes of maintenance and repair hinge on the fact of user ownership. In other words, the places where people are user-owners are kept up nicely; the places where they are not, tend to run down. When people have their own homes among shops, workplaces, schools, services, the university, these places are enhanced by the vitality that is natural to their homes. They extend themselves to make it personal and comfortable. A person will put more of himself into his home than into any of the other places where he spends his time. And it is unlikely that a person can put this kind of feeling into two places, two parts of his life. We conclude that many parts of the environment have the arid quality of not being cared for personally, for the simple reason that indeed nobody lives there.

It is only where houses are mixed in between the other functions, in twos and threes, in rows and tiny clusters, that the personal quality of the households and house-building activities gives energy to the workshops and offices and services.

TOWNS

Therefore:

Build houses into the fabric of shops, small industry, schools, public services, universities—all those parts of cities which draw people in during the day, but which tend to be “nonresidential.” The houses may be in rows or “hills” with shops beneath, or they may be free-standing, so long as they mix with the other functions, and make the entire area “lived-in.”

Z

occasional houses

❖ •$*

Make sure that, in spite of its position in a public area, each house still has enough private territory for people to feel at home in it—your own home (79). If there are several houses in one area, treat them as a cluster or as a row—house cluster (37), row houses (38). . . .

258

between the home clusters and work communities, allow the local road and path network to grow informally, 'piecemeal:

49 LOOPED LOCAL ROADS**

260

. . . assume that neighborhoods, house dusters, work communities, and major roads are more or less defined—local transport

AREAS ( I I ) , IDENTIFIABLE NEIGHBORHOOD ( I 4) , PARALLEL ROADS (23), HOUSE CLUSTER (37), WORK COMMUNITY (41). NOW, for the layout of the local roads.

♦£*

Nobody wants fast through traffic going by their homes.

Through traffic is fast, noisy, and dangerous. At the same time cars are important, and cannot be excluded altogether from the areas where people live. Local roads must provide access to houses but prevent traffic from coming through.

This problem can only be solved if all roads which have houses on them are laid out to be “loops.” We define a looped road as any road in a road network so placed that no path along other roads in the road network can be shortened by travel along the “loop.”

The loops themselves must be designed to discourage high volumes or high speeds: this depends on the total number of houses served by the loop, the road surface, the road width, and the number of curves and corners. Our observations suggest that a loop can be made safe so long as it serves less than 50 cars. At one and one-half cars per house, such a loop serves 30 houses; at one car per house, 50 houses; at one-half car per house, 100 houses.

Here is an example of an entire system of looped local roads designed for a community of 1500 houses in Peru.

Looped local roads in Lima.

26 I

Even a simple grid can be changed to have looped local roads.

'Pedestrian paths which go beyond a dead end.

Dead-end streets are also loops, according to the definition. However, cul-de-sacs are very bad from a social standpoint— they force interaction and they feel claustrophobic, because there is only one entrance. When auto traffic forms a dead end, make sure that the pedestrian path is a through path, leading into the cul-de-sac from one direction, and out of it in another direction.

These are not Looped local roads.

Recognize also that many roads which appear looped are actually not. This map looks as though it has looped roads. Actually, only one or two of these roads are looped in the functional sense defined.

262 49 LOOPED LOCAL ROADS

Therefore:

Lay out local roads so that they form loops. A loop is defined as any stretch of road which makes it impossible for cars that don’t have destinations on it to use it as a shortcut. Do not allow any one loop to serve more than 50 cars, and keep the road really narrow—17 to 20 feet is quite enough.

Make all the junctions between local roads three-way T junctions, never four-way intersections—t junctions (50) ; wherever there is any possibility of life from buildings being oriented toward the road, give the road a very rough surface of grass and gravel, with paving stones for wheels of cars—green streets (51); keep parking off the road in driveways—small parking lots (103) and car connection (113) ; except where the roads are very quiet, run pedestrian paths at right angles to them, not along them, and make buildings open off these paths, not off the roads—network of paths and cars (5 2). . . .

263