Suburban Nation - Andres Duany [24]
Georgetown demonstrates that it is not only due to elitism that suburbia fails to provide mixed-income housing. Making the transition between different housing types at mid-block is only possible within a system of traditional blocks, and this system is often absent in the suburbs. As shown here, the preferred technique of suburban design is to spin the buildings around in search of a pleasantly picturesque effect, rarely achieved. This aesthetic is promulgated by planners and engineers with no aesthetic training and is a far cry from the true discipline of the picturesque, whose intention it is to design spaces that are satisfying not just on paper but perceptually, in three dimensions. Lacking the discipline of building fronts and backs, this kind of suburban planning rules out the possibility of mixing housing type street by street. In fact, there are no streets to speak of, only residual parking lots squeezed between the buildings.
Train wreck: planning in futile pursuit of the picturesque creates buildings without fronts, backs, or street addresses
The recently built Kentlands neighborhood in Gaithersburg, Maryland, is a good example of diverse housing. Mansions sit just around the corner from town houses, with garage apartments located on a shared rear lane. Despite its roots in tradition, this design was considered absolutely radical when we proposed it. First, it was against the rules, as it continues to be illegal to mix housing types in most of the United States. Second, and more significant, it contradicted all the accumulated wisdom of the homebuilding industry, which said that integrating different prices in the same neighborhood would kill sales.
A typical block in Kentlands: mansions, row houses, and apartments
Planning for diversity: housing on this one block ranges in price from $500,000 homes to $750-per-month apartments
As the ensuing high prices indicated, the experts were mistaken applying conventional wisdom to Kentlands. Variety may be something to fear when selling houses in an isolated pod, but in a real neighborhood, the more housing types the better. In a neighborhood, people buy the community first and the house second. The more a place resembles an authentic community, the more it is valued, and one hallmark of a real place is variety. w
One term that gets a lot of play these days is “cookie cutter.” Developers are mortified about the way this term is used to describe their subdivisions, and they expend a good deal of energy—and money—avoiding it. As much as 20 percent of their construction budget goes toward the application of superficial variety—different shapes, colors, window types, different styles of tack-on ornament, French Provincial next door to California Contemporary. But these efforts are in vain, because beneath the surface articulation is a relentless repetition of the same building. The best way to create real variety is to vary not the architectural style but the building type. Indeed, in places like Georgetown, styles vary only slightly, but one never hears the term cookie cutter, thanks to the wide range of building types.
Interestingly, architectural style still plays a key role, but in the opposite way: it is often the consistent use of a single style that makes the integration of different building types possible. In Kentlands, the mid-Atlantic Georgian vocabulary camouflages differences by creating a harmonious streetscape. Any cachet that may be associated with the mansions rubs off on the apartments as well.
In truth, Georgetown and Kentlands only hint at the degree of integration possible among housing types and income levels. Different buildings can be made so compatible in terms of shape, placement, and architectural expression that there may be no need to segregate them, even street by street. This image, from Annapolis, shows