Kid-Friendly Urban Spaces

I’m teaching 2nd Year Architecture Studio at the University of Miami this semester.  The focus of the class is town planning to create walkable urbanism.  I and the other 2nd Year instructors recently took our students on a cross-state odyssey to visit the new beachfront resort town of Seaside, FL.  Seaside is the landmark project that, designed by Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk 30 years ago, began the international revival of traditional town planning.  Seaside has continued to mature and grow more complete over the decades, and today is a wonderfully vibrant example of a highly walkable place.

Seaside is the cover image of the seminal book The New Urbanism, by Peter Katz:

I’ve been to visit Seaside a number of times in the past, but never the way I would on this trip.  I decided to add a few extra days to the trip, give my wife Krisztina a little break, and take my 20 month-old son Benji with me - turning the journey into a father son road trip!

I’ll admit that I was a bit daunted by the prospect of travelling solo with Benji for 5 days.  The drive from Miami to Seaside takes about 10 hours, traversing the entire State.  And Benji is a very energetic little boy!  I planned the trip with two days to travel in each direction, giving plenty of time to stop, stretch our legs, and to show Benji some of my favorite places in Florida along the way.

My epiphany: on this journey, I discovered that the destinations in Florida that I love for their lively urban spaces are also wonderful kid-friendly places!

Stop 1: Winter Park, FL
Our first stop was Winter Park, just north of Orlando.  Winter Park has a great main street, Park Avenue, where Benji and I stopped for lunch.  Dover, Kohl & Partners, the office I work for, helped to plan for the refurbishment of this street a number of years ago.  Park Avenue has a wide sidewalk, narrow travel lanes, on-street parking, street trees, and other details that make activities like outdoor dining work well.  These same details made Park Avenue a great location for Benji to stretch his legs!

Park Avenue also has a great collection shops along pedestrian passages leading to beautiful mid-block courtyards with fountains.  These passageways, such as Greeneda Court shown here, were a perfect place to let Benji run and explore:

In one of the courtyards, the owners of the little cafe were thoughtful enough to place a couple of toy boats in the fountain for kids!  Benji could play while I sat just steps away with a coffee - a perfect kid-friendly and adult-friendly urban space!

Just steps away on the other side of Park Avenue is a large square called Central Park.  After our lunch, I took Benji there to run around before the next leg of our trip:

Stop 2: Gainesville, FL
Our next big stop was Gainesville.  We visited the University of Florida campus and the central quadrangle was a great safe place to let Benji run free.  He especially loved playing on the gator statue:

Stop 3: Madison, FL
Our last stop before Seaside was the little town of Madison, in Florida's panhandle.  The town's square has a great gazebo, monuments and fountains that Benji loved exploring!

Seaside, FL!
At long last, after 10 hours of driving over two great days, Benji and I arrived in Seaside!

We met up with the University of Miami students in the town square near Seaside's little classical Post Office, originally the first structure built.  Seaside has a great variety of urban spaces and Benji really enjoyed exploring them all!  

A farmers market was being held in the town square - another great example of a place where a kid can run free in an environment that is interesting and stimulating for all ages:

The famous Airstream Trailer food truck roundup in Seaside's town square:

Seaside's open-air market bazaar near the beach:

Cool and shady Ruskin Square, surrounded by rowhouses and small shops:

Seaside does have a wonderful, quiet, shady children's playground that Benji enjoyed for a bit, but he was soon ready to get back to the action of the rest of the town!

A testament to Seaside's well-connected, narrow, traffic-calmed streets - I could play with Benji right in the street and not worry about speeding cars!

Benji loved climbing up into the little gazebo in the middle of the roundabout at the end of Tupelo Street.

In the evening, I bought Benji a little toy guitar at a shop on the town square, and then we strolled through the market bazaar, and down one of Seaside's well-marked public beach accesses.  The whole route was so easy to follow that I was able to walk behind Benji as he found his own way from the town square to the water's edge!

Alys Beach, FL
After Seaside, we took the University of Miami students to visit nearby Alys Beach, another new walkable beachfront resort town also designed by Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk and Andres Duany.  This next-generation project has continued to evolve the state-of-the-art in pedestrian-friendly (and therefore kid-friendly) urban spaces.

Alys Beach incorporates a fascinating blend of influences from places with great walkable urbanism optimized for hot climates including: Bermuda, St Augustine, the Greek islands, Dutch South Africa and the cities of North Africa.  The growing town features a number of exquisitely designed, narrow streets and intimate squares that are often free from motorized vehicles.

In conclusion: 
Main streets, urban courtyards, parks with fountains, academic quadrangles, farmers markets, food truck roundups, open air market bazaars, pedestrian-friendly streets and squares are all wonderful places to spend one's time, and even better when spending time with a child! 


Amazon: The New Urbanism (by Peter Katz)

The Earliest Known Portrait of a Town

According to art historian J.G. Links in his book Townscape Painting and Drawing (1972), the earliest known true townscape is this relief by a sculptor of Avezanno, in the Abruzzi region of Italy (photo: Alinari):

Links defines "townscape" as a work of art in which a street, town or city itself is the subject.

The sculpture dates from the 1st century AD, when this region was the site of several bustling Roman towns on the edge of Lake Fucine.  The town depicted in the relief exhibits a clear separation between built and unbuilt landscapes.  Several blocks of structures are arranged compactly within a high gated wall.  A villa and several other individual structures are visible amid the rugged open countryside outside the wall.

In the 19th century, Prince Alessandro Torlonia had Lake Fucine drained and converted to fertile farmlands.  During the drainage process many artifacts from the earlier Roman settlements, including this relief, were discovered.  These artifacts formed the core of the Torlonia Collection, one of the world's finest private collections of artworks from antiquity.

Amazon: Townscape Painting and Drawing (by J.G. Links)

The Rule of Building Fronts and Backs

“We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us.” – Winston Churchill

How do we go about designing a nurturing built environment - one that makes us feel safe, interested, and connected?

One of the golden rules of urban design – one that has unfortunately been disregarded to grave effect all too often over the last half century – is the rule of building fronts and backs.  

This rule is quite simple:

Buildings have front sides and they have back sides.  A building’s front side should face the public realm; its back side should not. 

Consider that virtually every contributive urban building in the history of city-making adheres to this rule.  (Stand-alone buildings, particularly those in rural settings such as Palladio’s Villa Rotunda, are exempted – we are talking about urban fabric buildings here).  

Where this rule is violated, we usually sense that something is wrong – the environment will often feel incomplete, unengaging, uncared-for, and frequently unsafe.

Jane Jacobs describes the rule of building fronts and backs famously in The Death and Life of Great American Cities: “…there must be eyes upon the street, eyes belonging to those we might call the natural proprietors of the street.  The buildings on a street equipped to handle strangers and to insure the safety of both residents and strangers, must be oriented to the street.  They cannot turn their backs or blank sides on it and leave it blind.”

  

Interestingly, groups of buildings in urban settings follow many of the same basic rules of sociability that humans follow when in groups.  Think of a group of people in lively communication – like the group gathered around the dinner table in Norman Rockwell’s famous painting “Freedom from Want”.  The group all faces inward toward one-another.  The space between them, above the dining table, fairly vibrates with conviviality.  Imagine the upset that would occur if one of this dinner party decided to sit with their back to the table.  This would immediately communicate a rude and disturbing detachment, perhaps even disgust with the proceedings.  This closely mimics the damage done to the civility of a public space if a building is designed to not face it properly.

The arrangement of figures in Rockwell's painting above bears a tremendous similarity to the arrangement of the buildings fronting the great public space of the Piazza San Marco in Venice as depicted in the 1720 painting by Canaletto below:

So - what do we mean by a building front, and by a building back?  This was self-evident in earlier times, and it is really quite simple:

1. A building front is the building’s presentation face.  It contains the front door and it has a high degree of window area to provide permeability.  Door and window openings allow the building to communicate with the space in front of it, much like the eyes and mouth on the front of a person’s head.  Expanses of blank wall must be avoided at all costs on a building’s front, as this is as off-putting as it would be to attempt to communicate with a person with no facial features or expressions.

2. A building back contains service functions which do not belong on the presentation face, such as loading docks, dumpster enclosures, and parking lots.  Permeability is much less critical on a building’s back side.  The back of the building is also the private side, and may feature enclosed private outdoor open space.  Exposing a building’s back elements to the public realm is a bit like turning the wrong way in public while wearing a hospital gown open in the back – rear exposure of private areas can be quite awkward! 

When building fronts and backs are confused:

All too often today, designers have unfortunately become accustomed to designing structures floating randomly on their sites.  The grammar of fronts and backs often becomes so confused that no side is a true presentation face.  For example, we have all seen buildings wrecked by ground floor loading docks abutting the sidewalk.

Another common error made all too often nowadays is backing buildings up to large streets.  This unfortunate configuration is commonly seen along arterial and collector roadways on the edges of suburban housing subdivisions.  When large streets are assumed to be poor addresses and are instead faced with the backs of buildings, a self-fulfilling prophesy is initiated – backing buildings up to a street guarantees a bleak and pedestrian-repellent public space.

Designing for an optimal fronts-backs arrangement:

The rule of building fronts and backs goes hand in hand with the discipline of proper block design.  When a pattern of blocks is set up with fronts and backs in mind, buildings can be oriented properly with very little effort.  Blocks should be configured so that the fronts of lots face outwards toward the street, and the backs of lots are grouped toward the middle of the block.  When multiple blocks designed this way are combined to form a neighborhood, building fronts and backs are much easier to organize, and will add up to form convivial, well-shaped, well-fronted public spaces.

    

Amazon: The Death and Life of Great American Cities (by Jane Jacobs)

Teaching Architecture to Newborns - by Jason King

[The following guest post is authored by Jason King, Project Director at Dover, Kohl & Partners town planning jking@doverkohl.com]

I came across a facial recognition test for newborns in the book Be Prepared: A Practical Handbook for New Dads (2004). Sure enough, my boy, Owen, who is twelve weeks old fixated on the image in the test of the recognizable human face with its symmetry and natural order (see below). I was actually shocked. When I covered up the face on the right Owen really didn't seem to know what to look at. I repeated the test with my wife as witness. This second test was less conclusive but there was a moment when we think Owen actually smiled at the face on the right.

Do people naturally prefer the principles of composition present in the human body to be present in architecture? We commonly talk about buildings having "a face" but is there a human connotation to this?  Do we prefer contrast, proportion, scale, balance, rhythm, and unity over disorder, irregularity, proportional illogic, and dissimilarity? Perhaps the failure of architecture in our time to create congenial environments is a failure to appreciate the psychological search images we have as children. Or maybe the reverse is true and our sense of beauty can be actively shaped. Perhaps culture tells us what to assign value to and what to like. The answer is probably a little of both.   

Do you see what I see? If so, does it effect your appreciation of the building? Which do you prefer?

I wrote a novel called New Town St. Jerome which features a character, an architect, who has a definite opinion on the topic. According to Leo Dana, "Buildings are people. The facade is a face and the proportions should be the same as a face – broadly considered. Sometimes it is many faces but you cannot confuse them. Sometimes a building is many people with every part reflective of the proportions of the human body. And when there are many people there must be a leader. A hierarchy."

"Architectural debate," says Leo, "is often framed as traditional-versus-modernist but the debate is really humanist architecture versus technological architecture." Leo recognizes that modern architecture can be humanist but is prepared to fire his avante-garde client before inflicting what Leo calls, "that buildings are machines crap" on people. In this time in history it's no wonder that Leo's peers give him the nickname "Loco."

I don't actually advise trying to teach architecture to newborns but I do hope Owen gets to think enough about architecture one day to be able to articulate his own opinion. But I can't help but wonder if when Owen is older he will still have the same opinion that I think I may be seeing now.

Jason King is the author of New Town St. Jerome which is available at Amazon: New Town St Jerome

Balboa Park - San Diego, CA

I was just in San Diego, speaking at the 2013 Crittenden National Real Estate Conference on a panel about "Adaptive Reuse of Distressed Urban Properties into Hotels & Revitalizing Downtowns & Historic Places".

I planned a bit of extra time into my trip to see the City.  The first evening I drove up to beautiful Balboa Park, located on a series of high ridges overlooking San Diego.  The Park boasts a spectacular, formally-arranged collection of museums, theaters and gardens in the Spanish Colonial Revival style with intricately-sculpted Plateresque elements:

Balboa Park's buildings are inhabited by 16 or so museums and cultural institutions.  The grounds and multiple gardens are open 24 hours a day. I drove up to stroll them in the moonlight each night before returning to my hotel.  I lunched at The Prado restaurant which boasts some of the best food in San Diego. I attended a marvelous Piranesi exhibit at the San Diego Museum of Art.  I attended a live figure drawing session one evening, hosted by the San Diego Art Institute in the Museum of the Living Artist.  (Luckily I had been sketching buildings in the Park and had my sketchbook with me!).  For me, Balboa Park is heaven on earth and I could easily spend a week there going to museums, sketching and painting!  

Balboa Park's bold, strongly massed classical forms in adobe are punctuated with moments of spectacularly florid sculptural detail, particularly around the entrances to buildings, and on focal towers:

  

The Park was the site of the 1915–16 Panama–California Exposition designed by Bertram Goodhue and the 1935–36 California Pacific International Exposition, designed by Richard Requa.  San Diego was the smallest City ever to host a World's Fair, so the designers were intent on making a strong impression with their works, in order to promote the City as a place worthy of international attention (and investment).  Both expositions left architectural gems.  

Goodhue is responsible for the Park's primary formal arrangement of buildings along expertly-composed axes and cross axes, linked by continuous arcades:

The buildings and arcades shape a network of beautiful, shady gardens and public spaces:

The formal arrangement of buildings is punctuated frequently by whimsical, focal towers and cupolas:

The approach to the Park is on Laurel Avenue via a very tall, arched adobe bridge spanning the Cabrillo Canyon:  

The California Bell Tower rises into view to the left of the main axis as one crosses the Cabrillo Bridge and then passes through a narrow arched gateway into the small arcaded California Quadrangle at the feet of the highly sculptured entrance to the Museum of Man:

Passage through a second small arched gateway leads to El Prado, the grand axis of the Park lined on both sides with spacious arcades linking the entrances to the various museums, all slightly different in their miraculously-conceived details but harmonious in general form and dispositions along axis and cross axis:

I returned to Balboa Park perhaps 6 times in my three and a half days in San Diego.  I have seen photos of so many other classic expositions like the 1889 Exposition Universelle in Paris, the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago and the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, yet only small fragments of them remain - the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the Museum of Science in Chicago and the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco.  I have always imagined how these glorious expositions must have looked in their entirety and in Balboa Park I was able to experience it!  

Like other expositions, the future of Balboa Park's buildings was once uncertain. The City and numerous civic organizations have, with great foresight over the decades, coordinated the conversion of the Park's buildings from their original temporary materials into permanent structures to preserve them for future generations.  What a spectacular gift and legacy!