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*Case studies present clear solutions for typical suburban problems: the need for pedestrian access, the lack of parking, the presence of industrial-park eyesores, and the issue of how to create a "sense of place"
*Illustrations take architects and planners step-by-step through the design and development process (20011201)
[Community by Design] was written for professionals, politicians, and citizens "taking an active role...and for those who are not yet part of the process but who want to know what it's about."
Part 1, "Parts of the Puzzle," provides the reader with background on a variety of important topics and tools. In Chapter 1, "What is Community Design, Anyway?" the authors introduce basic definitions of neighborhood and community, present the building blocks of community design, and offer a description of spatial components and some of the community designer's tools.
In "Putting It All Together" [Part 2], each chapter contains information focused on community design issues. With chapter titles including "Where Would You Rather Live?" and variants "...Shop?",...Work?",...Relax?", the authors present material that is well organized, clear, and accessible. In each chapter they describe pertinent issues, present patterns of development found in conventional suburban developments (those built after World War II), and offer alternatives from traditional neighborhood developments or those developments that are often found in older communities. Each chapter emphasizes some of the choices we have when designing communities as places for living, shopping, working, and relaxing. This comparative format works effectively.
For illustration, the authors provide black-and-white photos, descriptive plans, and project profiles.
...Community by Design...provide[s] valuable information that...can provide planners, designers, and citizens with information for making more educated community design decisions. (Landscape Architecture )
Written by two notable designer/planners, Community by Design makes it simple to:
*Create places that foster community identity, neighborliness, and positive growth in new and existing developments
*Find new solutions to vexing problems in residential, commercial, office, recreational, and public areas
*Accommodate growth in a sustainable manner while preserving the character of the landscape
*Improve your own neighborhood with tested ideas from award-winning design firms.
Community by Design is the first practical guide to creating communities that truly are communities—not merely enclaves near off-ramps. Giving you page after page of solutions to the problems of suburban sprawl and the traffic congestion it engenders, this pictorial guide makes it easy to envision, create, and apply answers that make your town or new development a better place to live.
Community by Design provides complete solutions for all the places that people live, shop, work, and relax, including:
*Defining community in terms we can all understand
*Understanding neighborhood as the fundamental building block of community
*Identifying the process of community design from concept to implementation
*Learning how to put the automobile in its place
*Creating places where people want to walk
*Using recommended design strategies to create livable neighborhoods or recreate existing ones
*Applying the concepts found in traditional neighborhood design in order to bring scale and sense of place
You are given practical ways to integrate the elements discussed throughout the book. This guide to creating communities is more than a pie-in-the-sky.
Community by Design is a concise, realistic, easy-to-read book about making today’s communities meet the needs of their citizens. Design professionals, elected officials, and citizens need this book as they take an active role to ensure that their communities are products of real vision. This book is also for those who want to know what it’s all about in easily understandable terms and to be able to talk about it with their friends.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
A Not-So-Practical Guide to New Urbanism,
By
This review is from: Community By Design: New Urbanism for Suburbs and Small Communities (Hardcover)
The suburban landscape of the United States is the subject of this book, advertised as "the first practical guide to creating communities that truly are communities-not merely enclaves near off-ramps." Guided by the principles of the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU), the book uses excerpts from that organization's Charter to illuminate its advocacy of more connected development patterns. The book's scope extends beyond the commercial strip to include the major building blocks of towns and suburbs, such as apartment complexes, schools, parks and office campuses.
Hall and Porterfield includes passages of fist-thumping suburbia-bashing similar to James Howard Kunstler's Home From Nowhere (1998, Touchstone Books) or Jane Holtz Kay's Asphalt Nation (1997, Crown). They also include graphic material, much of it adapted their earlier book, A Concise Guide to Community Planning (1994, McGraw-Hill). Readers knowledgeable about New Urbanism will find few surprises here, other than a few glaring factual errors, like a reference to "Tyson's Corners, Virginia, one of the largest metropolitan areas in the United States" (p. 7) and a claim that Edge Cities and urban villages are "two names for essentially the same thing" (p. 210). Good points crop up here and there, but recommendations are so limited in scope that it can be difficult to discern whether the sample site designs are intended to be good or bad examples, which limits the book's usefulness pedagogically. The lack of dimensions on most of the drawings also severely limits the book's utility as a practical reference. Hall and Porterfield contrast "conventional suburban development" and "Traditional Neighborhood Development" options for site plans, but the comparisons sometimes seem forced and nearly always ignore the larger regional issues so critical to the debate. One ideal audience for this book might suburban planning commissioners, who need guidance from designers in order to understand the differences between conventional suburban development pods and walkable, human-scaled neighborhoods.
15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
For Novices Only,
By
This review is from: Community By Design: New Urbanism for Suburbs and Small Communities (Hardcover)
Community by Design is an introduction to the basics of community design and New Urbanism. It's useful if that's what you're after, but not an interesting read if you're anything but a novice on the the topic. It reads like a texbook for a freshman-level course in urban design. Used for that purpose, I'm certain it would be more than successful. As a source of new, insightful commentary on the subject of New Urbanism it falls more than a little short.
29 of 43 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Recommendation from the author,
By Kenneth B. Hall (Virginia Beach, Virginia) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Community By Design: New Urbanism for Suburbs and Small Communities (Hardcover)
I wanted to take the opportunity to recommend this book to anyone who has wondered why every place in America looks like everywhere else. There's a funny line in the Rocky and Bullwinkle movie where "our heros" are traveling by car across America in a race against time to foil the plan of the arch villan. As they pass the same gas station and fast food franchise again and again Bullwinkle says, "Haven't we been here before?" That was the same reaction my seven-year old had this summer when we were on our family vacation. We were in Richmond, Virginia and he said we've been here before because I remember that place over there. I had to explain to him what franchise architecture was and how just about every town in America has one of those types of buildings. This is a sad commentary on the American landscape that we as consumers expect the to see the familiar sign of our favorite business. This is one reason why I wrote this book; to let folks know that there's a better way. In fact, we used to do it better. The types of places that capture our attention and long to live are the places that were built prior to World War II. The small towns that so many families idealize as the place they'd rather raise their kids are the same places that couldn't be built today because of "modern" zoning ordinances. And the sad thing is today's generation is the first to be raised totally in a suburban environment that requires owning an automobile just to survive. If you're intersted in how this could change and what the alternatives are Community by Design is your book! There's 250 illustrations and photos that show you what's possible right now. The book helps you understand why community can and should be designed and lets you see some places where it has been. If you ask me this is a great book. ...
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