Ken Dueker - Baltimore Conference 96

Neotraditional Design: Resisting the Decentralizing Forces of New Spatial Technologies

Kenneth J. Dueker

Introduction

There is a disparity between the urban planner's vision of compact urban development and the reality of long-term urban decentralization trends. The conventional wisdom is developing in the planning profession, based on the New Urbanism movement that is a near obsession with the specter of "urban sprawl," and leads to land use and transportation plans that attempt to reverse current trends and consumer preferences. This often leads to a self selection of evidence to claim success. For instance, as will be illustrated Portland's success story with Light Rail Transit and its Urban Growth Boundary is not consistent with actual data on mode share change, multiple-family housing patterns in relation to LRT, and distribution of new housing. Yet, planner's tend to dismiss the data as what is wrong and what needs to be changed with more effort.
Growing auto ownership and declining transit ridership resulting from increases in trip making for non-work purposes tends to swamp increases in traffic carrying capacity. This leads planners to propose policies to tolerate congestion and to calm traffic in an effort to increase densities and a revitalization of inner cities. Meanwhile, the data show decentralizing forces seem to continue unabated. Given the market segmentation of consumer preferences for lifestyle both outcomes are occurring, but planners seem to be wishing the back to the city movement is the majority while the evidence indicates it is a small market segment.
The danger is that this movement is based on the neotraditional design concept, which is predicated on the long discredited concept of "environmental determinism", wherein design shapes behavior.

Neotraditional Design Concept and Issues

The neotraditional design or New Urbanism paradigm (Duany and Plater-Zyberk,1991; Calthorpe, 1993)is a new manifestation of environmental determinism, wherein the urban designer's role is to social engineer, to effect (social) change through urban design. (Ellin, p 134). Ellin (1995, p. 137 critiques this "...search for urbanity (as) misguided when it ignores the contemporary context altogether or falls into the trap of environmental determinism presuming that traditional urban forms will engender traditional urban lifestyles."
Audirac and Shermyen (1994) characterize the new urbanism as a postmodern reconstruction of American suburbia that goes by various names: pedestrian pockets on the West Coast, urban villages in the Northeast, and neotraditional neighborhoods in Florida. They are similar with pedestrian friendly streets and town cores of mixed uses. The transit-oriented development variation focuses around transit stations and mixed use developments.
One aspect of the transit-oriented development concept has been addressed by transportation planners is to determine whether neotraditional neighborhoods generate less traffic, have lower SOV mode shares and lead to better job housing balance. By examination of existing neotraditional development patterns in older central cities the answer is yes, but translating that conclusion to new transit-oriented developments in suburban locations is problematic.
The transit-oriented design issue has two important dimensions. One is whether we have the ability to reshape the existing development patterns and density. Will people be willing consumers of a new product? The second aspect is whether the new form will produce fewer auto trips and thus more transit and non-vehicular trips. What will happen to those who are priced out of single family housing? Will they pay a higher price for higher density, or will they move out to exurbia or nearby small towns and commute farther? Will those that stay shift from driving alone to ridesharing or transit? Although there is evidence that existing transit-oriented development patterns, usually developments in older areas well served by transit, have higher transit ridership rates than newer auto-oriented areas, it should not be argued that new transit-oriented developments will have as large an impact as these comparisons would suggest. Will people moving to new transit-oriented developments be former auto-oriented residents who will change their behavior or will it attract transit-oriented residents from older, but similar developments who will bring their transit behavior with them?
Recent research by Genevieve Giuliano finds a weakening transportation-land use connection. Her analysis of the Portland's LUTRAQ study is that "land use policies appear to have little impact on travel outcomes; most of the observed change is due to the TDM (Transportation Demand Management) policies, rather than to the land use and transit policies. Without TDM, travel impacts of the LUTRAQ alternative are minor." (Access, Spring 1995, p. 8)
Giuliano concludes that "scholars view transportation as an ineffective means for shaping urban form for three reasons: Giuliano concludes that "if the aim is to reduce environmental damage generated by automobiles, the effective remedy is to directly price and regulate autos and their use, not land use. If the aim is to reduce metropolitan spatial segmentation, the effective remedy is to expand the range of housing and employment choices, not travel choices." (p. 11)
Giuliano's recommendations will be difficult for Oregon planners to accept, as many subscribe fully to the doctrinaire belief manifested by a resurgence of environmental determinism characterized by neo-traditional design, called "new urbanism". William Fulton challenges the extreme New Urbanism planners to stay in touch with today's world, and not "believe that ideal communities miraculously spring forth, fully formed, from weekend design charettes..... and [they] don't want any competing ideas to see the light of day." ("Viewpoint", Planning, July 1995 p. 50)
Gordon and Richardson have argued extensively the proponents of compact development cannot support their sweeping claims of the costs of sprawl, and that continued improvements in transportation and communications will obviate the need for concentrated settlement patterns.
Planner's resurrection of environmental determinism is inconsistent with continued decentralization trends. For example, Tietz (1996) sees Barton and Siverman (1989) critique of gated communities as an extension of suburban fragmentation as a contradiction to ever-greater global communications and electronic interconnection. Telecommunicatons and transportation technologies are leading to greater dispersion potential for population. Long distance commuting, telecommuting, and exurban living are major decentralizing forces that fly in the face of urban containment and densification policies that planners are using to combat urban sprawl. Urban sprawl is a specter that does not warrant the attention given our inability to identify and measure the costs of sprawl.
ITS (Intelligent Transportation Systems) is a spatial technology that promises both smart cars and smart highways, that will maintain supremacy of the auto, and in conjunction with telecommunications will enable long, but less frequent commutes and more affluent communities, insulated by low density and far removed from inner city decay, thereby increasing disparities in our society. Boyer, in CyberCities ( ) argues that the proliferation of computers and telecommunications are destroying cities, people become less interested in the physical city and more interested in what's on their screen. She links cyberspace and sprawl.
Graham and Marvin ( ) paint a different and more modest picture of the impact of telecommunications on the city. They argue that urban planning is blind to telecommuncations issues. They conclude that ":what is emerging is a 'more totally urbanized' world, where rural spaces and lifestyles are being drawn into an urban realm", and draw our attention to the impact of earlier technologies on the city.
Portland is an example of an area that has embrace the neotraditional planning concept, but the data do not support the belief. Whereas in most large metropolitan areas there is unending debate concerning land use and transportation, Portland seemingly has its act together with apparent consensus on using investment in light rail transit and a tightly drawn urban growth boundary to combat urban sprawl. Perhaps, it is the timely to examine this remarkable and unique experiment to reverse a long-standing trend of urban decentralization. Portland politicians and planners have embraced the notion that Portland ought not be like other cities, LA and Seattle in particular. Is this is a decision that planners and politician are capable of delivering? Is it a decision that the public will embrace by changing their mode of travel and type and density of housing?
As an urban transportation researcher, I find this to be a fascinating real-world experiment to monitor and analyze. However, I am concerned that Portland area residents have not knowingly consented to be willing research subjects in a radical experiment. This experiment in reversing urban decentralizing trends is being done without substantial discussion and debate of downside risks. The planning process and the media coverage of it have not provided sufficient careful examination. Belated attempts in legislative hearings concerning state funding for light rail to examine the premises upon which the light rail investment is based by expert witnesses was largely dismissed by proponents as opinions of outsiders who don't understand Oregon.
What if the opponents are right that light rail is not cost effective, and what if Oregon is not different? Comparing 1980 and 1990 census data for Portland, Los Angeles, and Seattle indicate that we are not really different. All three urban areas declined in the share of commuters who use transit. In fact, Portland lost by a greater amount than the other two cities.
A report by the U.S. Department of Transportation, New Perspectives in Commuting, is based on early data from the 1990 decennial census. Commuting behavior has not responded to our current transportation and land use plans. "The Portland area trends from 1980 to 1990....are a model of the national trend. In Multnomah County, carpooling dropped from 17.7 percent to 12.9 percent, and transit use declined from 13.1 percent to 9.6 percent. Outlying counties showed similar patterns. Transit declines in the City of Portland itself were particularly marked with shares dropping from 15.9 percent to 10.9 percent. Only working at home and driving alone showed significant gains in shares. ... Portland was one of the cities in which driving alone increased more than the increase in workers."
The same report also shows that Seattle and Los Angeles gained transit ridership among commuters while Portland lost. This is partly attributable to faster growth rates in Seattle and Los Angeles during that period, but the loss in share carried by transit from 1980 to 1990 was higher in Portland than in LA and Seattle. Portland's share of work trips by transit fell from 8.4% in 1980 to 5.3% in 1990, while LA's share fell from 6.4% to 5.7%, and Seattle's share fell from 10.7% to 7.8%. These data should serve to alert Portland area residents to be less smug that we are on the right path, and Seattle and LA are going to wallow in congestion and sprawl.

Conclusions

The neotraditional design concept turns a deaf ear to two important literatures, one that discredits physical determinism and another that developed environmental design from the excesses of gridiron street pattern designs. The lessons of Ian McHarg's Design with Nature, Kevin Lynch's Site Planning, and William Whyte's cluster design concept, ought not to be ignored by a nostalgic return to the gridiron street pattern. Sensitive environmental design would be compromised by a rigid return to the gridiron pattern.
The neotraditonal design concept is a nostalgic view of family, neighboring, travel and communications in a world that no longer exists. The family interacting with neighbors via the front porch and walking to the corner store, school, or work is no longer the norm. Personal transportation in the form of the auto has broadened a person's action space and options, so that opportunities within walking distance are not competitive or satisfying. At the housing unit level, the technologies of air conditioning and television have made the front porch obsolete. On the other hand, this cocooning of housing makes higher density housing more acceptable, exterior noise is masked.

Kenneth J. Dueker
Center for Urban Studies
Portland State University
Portland, OR 97207-0751
Phone: 503-725-4042
Fax: 503-725-5199
email: ken@upa.pdx.EDU