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Once students fought for civil rights. Now they want mixed-use, transit-oriented development.
By Jonathan Lerner
The Metropolis Observed
February 2003
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Could a New Urbanist become the next campus icon?
© Anna Clopet/CORBIS, photo manipulation by Damian Chadwick
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The most prominent advocates of New Urbanism--architects and planners such
as Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, Andres Duany, Peter Calthorpe, and Stefanos
Polyzoides--were students during the politically heady 1960s and '70s, and
perhaps that's when they learned to be visionaries and activists. Surprisingly
when they set out to recruit followers, they didn't think to enlist students.
Luckily the students came to them.
The first New Urbanist student activists were born at University of
Georgia when a proponent, provocative author James Howard Kunstler, spoke
there in 1999. "He brought down the house," recalls Lucy Rowland,
a research librarian who manages a New Urbanist listserv and acts as an
adviser for the club. "One guy quit his engineering job and went back
to school in environmental design. Another, a freshman in business whose
girlfriend dragged him to the lecture, had an epiphany and switched majors
the next week."
The Congress for New Urbanism (CNU) is responding to student interest with
a commitment to establish official campus chapters and add a student
representative to its board of directors. The organization hopes to formalize
student groups during this academic year at the University of Illinois,
Notre Dame, Auburn, Clemson, Georgia, and Georgia Tech. There's interest
from students at other schools too--even Brigham Young, which offers no
architecture curriculum but where 40 attended the first meeting of
a Students for the New Urbanism group in October. (Most of them aim to become
developers and want exposure to the New Urbanist approach.) "The Duanys,
Plater-Zyberks, Calthorpes, Polyzoides, et cetera, have fought hard for
what they believe. I respect them greatly for it," says Zach Borders,
who is currently working toward a dual masters degree in architecture and
urban planning at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He goes
on with, well, the brashness of youth, to assert, "The youth is the
answer to every question pertaining to, 'How do we make this last?'"
CNU's student chapters will provide education on its planning approach,
which favors compact, mixed-use, transit-oriented development and architecture
where individual buildings blend in rather than stand out. It's a philosophy
that some architecture faculties ignore and others treat with hostility.
Brian Wright, who recently completed a master's degree in landscape architecture
at Auburn and is now a designer at Duany Plater-Zyberk, is helping to organize
the campus groups. "I wish there had been something like this going
on while I was in school," he says. "My thesis was based on the
principles of New Urbanism, but I couldn't say 'New Urbanism.' I won a national
ASLA award for it, and my professors gave me an A. But once when I mentioned
Seaside, I about got rotten fruit thrown at me."
The chapters also aim to provide professional networking and job opportunities
in an industry that is largely down. "Despite the pooh-poohing of New
Urbanism in the architecture schools, a lot of New Urbanist firms are
booming," says Steven Bodzin, CNU's communications director. "There's
been tremendous growth in New Urbanist development in the past five
years, and it's not showing any sign of letting up."
During this New Year's holiday the American Institute of Architecture Students
held Forum 2002, its annual conference, in Chicago with the theme "City
Reborn." Bodzin says the event "looked like a clone of a CNU congress,"
with its seminars on topics like community-based design and urban corridors,
and a talk by Kunstler entitled "Parking Lot Nation."
"The challenge is for the youth to become knowledgeable and to responsibly
carry the torch," says the young firebrand Borders, who was also
chairperson for the conference. "In our eyes we see New Urbanism changing
its name in popular culture to Good Urbanism. No one wants the horrid garbage
that is currently acceptable in this country. We don't need a war to motivate
a generation."
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