Sometimes the most effective way to talk about a good idea is to write a story. This book tells the story of Ed Rice, a semi-retired senior town planner who spent 50 years planning the suburban developments of the town of Blandville, the place that could be anywhere. When the judge takes away his drivers license, he discovered what an absolute mess he and his peers created in approving what his critics called suburban sprawl. Unable to get around without a car, he sells his split-level rancher in Blandville Heights, and arranges for a driver to take him to a retirement home fours hours away. He has no choice as he resigns himself to an empty future where he will have little to do other than keep himself comfortably busy while he waits for death to take him. As his driver transports him one last time along the wide boulevards of Blandville, Ed explains to his driver the hollowness of what he helped build since the 1950's… a place built not to serve its citizens, but to sell more cars. Finally, worn out as they pull onto the freeway, he drifts off to sleep. He awakes when his driver stops for lunch at a VillageTown; a 10,000 population community where everything its citizens need for daily life is within a ten-minute walk. The Visitor's Bureau invites him and his driver to take a tour of a most remarkable place, socially and culturally enriched, with a thriving local economy. It is a town made of 20 villages, side by side, each village different that the next, so it feels more like traveling from one country to another. His hosts explain that a VillageTown provides for what the ancients called "The Good Life". When several villages come together so they may be self-supporting or nearly so, the purpose of their continued existence is to provide for the Good Life, understood as the pursuits of conviviality, citizenship, artistic & intellectual growth, and spiritual development and fulfillment. Ed's tour guide, a young exchange student in the VillageTown hosted university year-abroad program escorts him from one village to another, introducing him to its citizens, each of whom tells their story of their life in their village. Most of the stories are real, and some of those who speak to Ed use their own words. Called cameos, these people include former Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall, Corporate Anthropologist Michael Henderson, Biologist Elisabet Sahtouris and Director of Doing Richard Hollingum. Other cameos by Professor John Bremer, and Slovenian Ambassador of Culture Miha Pogacnic are written by the author, but approved by the speakers. The author and many of the cameo speakers are part of a group called the Village Forum, dedicated to turning a good idea into real VillageTowns built around the world. It's an idea worth spreading; it's an idea worth doing. The book has been written for two reasons. 1) To explain the idea in an easy-to-read way that invites people to build their village. 2) To raise funds to build VillageTowns. All profits earned from the book sales goes to building VillageTowns. The author will collect no royalties and the publisher no fees. If, after reading the book, you like the idea, go to www.villageforum.com to learn more. If you think you would you like to live in a VillageTown the forum is where to express interest. Also check out two other books written by Claude Lewenz. "How to Build a Village" is a 256 page book with over 400 color photographs that provides detailed patterns of what works and why. "VillageTowns - the Next Step" is a recent book written because projects are now underway in four countries.
Claude Lewenz, born 1951, grew up in Baltimore, Maryland at a time when some of the best and worst of America's real estate development occurred in his home town. Levittown style suburban sprawl was in full bloom, the first shopping malls were built; the solid and often beautiful brick homes of the city were being torn down as block busters abandoned welfare tenements rather than pay for repairs; the Beltway and Jones Falls Expressway replaced the trains and trolleys with private cars that filled the air with a perpetual traffic roar that only ceased when a blizzard would stop the trucks for a few hours. At the same time, Baltimorians like journalist Marty Millspaugh and mortgage banker Jim Rouse set out a far more positive vision for the future, and remarkably, they succeeded. They enrolled politicians like the singular Mayor Donald Schaefer who gave new meaning to the word "yes" when it came to good ideas proposed by the citizens of his city. Those ideas first were voiced around kitchen tables, as Marty would pitch his vision to friends and neighbors like Claude's parents in Ruxton. Those early conversations at the kitchen table stuck with him.
Claude grew up with a lot of freedom. No one worried where the children were during the day; everyone had a different cow bell to ring when it was dinner time. No one locked their doors, and children wandered into neighbors' houses to visit, to listen to old people tell stories of the war, or the days before cars. Neighbors looked after each other and local crime was unknown.
When he married, he and his wife began to look for the kinds of communities they had known when young. Somehow, without any obituary, those places had disappeared. When their daughter was born, they lived in Greenwich Connecticut, a comfortable leafy town, but a place where children were never out of sight of parents, trusted friends or someone paid to look after the children. They began to look around, first in America and then world-wide, to find a place where children could be free, yet a place that was stimulating, intellectually and artistically creative. They found that place on a far off island in the South Pacific and moved there. But, while it provided the place to raise their daughter and enjoy the good life, Claude continued to pursue the question: Why do we build communities the way we do? Isn't there a better way?
Trained as a historian with a focus on the founding fathers of the United States; after his master's degree in school administration Claude spent five years reading Plato with Professor John Bremer. Claude wanted to understand what gave leaders like Thomas Jefferson the knowledge base to develop the language for a new nation. He found they had a classical education of a sort difficult to get in the modern university. So when he met Professor Bremer during Claude's master's program, he and Bremer established an advanced study program with no grades, no tuition, no transcripts, through which over 180 students pursued knowledge over a five-year period, purely for the sake of learning. While it may not have matched Jefferson's education, it was a good start.
Claude repeated that same pattern when it came to the search for a vibrant, stimulating, secure community. If you can't find it, build it. But what to build?
He embarked on a global study. He talked about it with many people, and in the mid 1980's word of his pursuits got back to Libby Rouse, Jim Rouse's wife when they were developing the 80,000 population town of Columbia. Libby invited him to speak in Baltimore, and afterwards asked Claude to promise than do more than just talk. "Those are things we wanted to do in Columbia, but the industry was too rigid at the time". However, the crash of 1987 caused Claude to put the subject on hold as he concentrated on keeping his software businesses alive. By this time, his software companies were developing and selling to local governments, giving him a good insight into how local governments work and think.
Claude got a break in 1995 when he secured funding that enabled him to stop working for two years (he had built up five computer software companies starting in 1980) so he could devote full time to asking the question. He began that research with an unusual premise. "Let's pretend that no one had asked the question before; there are no experts, no books... go to the people." This was not much different than his experience in 1980 with the package software business when it fact it was a new industry, and there were no experts or books. Some of the most creative work happens before the experts emerge to classify and articulate the rules.
So he went out into the field. He spoke with ordinary (and extraordinary) people and began to get a sense of what works, and why. He travelled, looking at places built before the grand experiment of the Industrial Revolution, to find places people loved... and then to understand why they loved them.
During that research many people would point to certain books, most notably Christopher Alexander's "A Pattern Language" published in 1977. When the work was completed, Claude purchased a copy and learned that he had been studying patterns. However, while Alexander articulated 253 patterns, Claude found his vocabulary of patterns went further as a framework emerged that ultimately became the VillageTown.
Claude then moved with his family to New Zealand in late 1997, where by necessity he began to master the art of vernacular building. Conventional building materials in New Zealand were far more expensive... sheets of plywood over NZ$100, and labor intensive manufacturing caused him to explore alternative construction methods. He designed and built a large home, studio, office and workshop for himself and his family. In the process, he learned the difference between buildings designed by professionals and buildings designed by the person writing the checks at the end of the week. Reducing complexity, designing for a wider margin of error and using a single bulk material so the same builders could do more of the work contributed to lower costs and a more beautiful, higher quality result.
At the same time he was supervising the work, Claude became director of a non-profit charitable trust that found itself in the middle of a major challenge to the largest local government in the country over a proposed development that managed to alienate almost every faction of his 8,000 population island community. As the fund manager for the court challenge (that they won), it proved a brilliant opportunity to learn how zoning rules are made and what is deemed important by local government planning officials.
In early 2006, Claude resumed his work on VillageTowns when he began the research to write "How to Build a Village". Travelling to Europe and America to collect 7,000 photographs to illustrate the patterns, it took 18 months to complete the book. When it was published, it was brought onto the market quietly to see how it would fare. The response was rapid and global as one on-line review sparked viral marketing that saw readers spread the word. Claude was invited to speak at gatherings, conferences and the TED event held in Sydney, Australia. He was flown into regions to tour, present, and to meet with the public and with officials to assess the potential for VillageTowns in their region. The circle of Village Stewards grew, forming the core of the Village Forum, and projects sprung up in Australia, Austria, New Zealand and the USA. Former Secretary of the Interior, Stewart L. Udall (1920-2010) agreed to serve as Chairman Emeritus of the Village Forum.
In 2010, Claude's second book, "Life Liberty Happiness" was published. Unlike the first book, which was large, heavy and comprehensive, this second book is told as a story... the story of a town planner in the town of Blandville who comes to realize what a mess his fifty years of suburban planning has wrought. Enroute to a retirement home because he crashed his car and they took away his license, his driver stops for lunch at a VillageTown, which they tour. The rest of the book finds him meeting many different people who tell him and the reader about their VillageTown. A number of the people who tell their story are real people who wrote or spoke their own story - most notably Stewart Udall who recorded his story nine months before he died at age 90.
Now, Claude is about to finish a third book: "VillageTowns - the next step" which provides a detailed manual for those who are ready to begin work on their own village. To learn more, see www.villageforum.com
