 |
|
|
|
Photograph by Skye Dunlap
Well designed high-density housing can help residents develop a sense of community, according to a speaker at a housing conference last week.
Housing fest gives skeptics a fresh look at cityscape
Industry group hears new ideas for high-density dwelling units
By Traci Hukill
Poor Linda Mandolini almost had a riot on her hands last Friday.
The organizer of the Silicon Valley Manufacturing Group's housing summit made the unpopular decision to abbreviate architect Michael Freedman's presentation on high-density housing in order to get the late-starting conference back on schedule. The 400 conference participants, who were themselves experiencing a high-density danish-and-coffee situation at crowded round tables, protested.
"Can we express our opinion?" called out one woman from the thicket of business suits in the middle of the room. "We'd like to hear what he has to say."
The crowd of realtors, builders, housing agency employees and politicians burst into impromptu applause. In a day of mostly uninspired discussion, Freedman was offering something all managers lust after: He was thinking outside the box--in this case, outside the big-box-apartment model of high-density housing.
"We have had people saying we need to change the paradigm--in other words, change what people think they want to buy," said Freedman, a charismatic speaker in a natty suit and earring. "That is not our job. Our job is to try to listen to what people want. To get people into higher density housing, we have to make them want to do it."
Freedman's speech came just days after a controversial report released by the Manufacturing Group. The report proposed that if the valley could suck it up and put higher density housing on the 6,400 acres remaining in the county's residential land inventory, it would in fact be able to house its burgeoning workforce for the next 20 years without making everyone commute from Modesto. The report met a chorus of dismay and invective focusing on "quality of life." Most people think of high-density housing in terms of squalor or antiseptic. Neither is a big draw to people raised to believe in the sanctity of three bedrooms and two baths.
"The photograph of the Crossings neighborhood in Mountain View which was used to illustrate manufacturers' plans for higher-density housing reminds me of the row houses of Welsh miners," fumed one disgusted reader in the Mercury News letters section in response to the report.
But in the darkened conference room at the Wyndham Hotel on Friday morning, Freedman was sketching for his listeners a vision of practical yet humane housing that far outstrips in every way the arid cookie-cutter (but detached!) housing developments perched on the outskirts of too many American cities.
"What we've been finding year after year in communities that want to create new neighborhoods is that they talk very much about what we used to call 'Elm Street,' " Freedman intoned as everyone's gaze turned to a slide-screen image of a gracious, shady avenue. "They talk about narrow streets and slow-moving traffic. They talk about grass and big trees.
"This environment is at least as important a part of the American Dream as the fact of the detached single-family home," he continued. He went on to enumerate, and to show with slides, the ways in which a building of townhouses can develop the kind of "relationship" with the street that imparts a sense of safety and community--something people associate with living well in America. The secret ingredients are simple: Lit windows, so people know "eyes are on the street." Doorways and porches facing the street and garages out back or below. Landscaped strips between the sidewalks and the street. Narrow streets that make it impossible to roar past houses at 45 mph. All these measures, Freedman explained, keep people connected to the streets, and by extension the communities, where they live.
Freedman spoke of the necessity of sculpting space with buildings (i.e., creating plazas) to provide "an outdoor room that is a setting for this thing we talk about but don't know how to accommodate--community." He talked about transportation and the need to build along transit lines. He discussed the degeneration of the strip mall as those commercial centers lose power and value just as the downtown areas did before them. He suggested that high-density mixed-use planning--in which retail, office space and density housing are combined in a village-like atmosphere--can actually improve the quality of life for city residents.
For an hour at least, it was possible to believe that we can dig ourselves out of this pit. The trouble will be remembering what we learned--and ignoring our hurried schedules long enough to listen.
|
|
|
|
Sunnyvale, California Since 1994
