400 Years

1. New Haven, CN – British Settlement 1638

The Haven Green in the center of the nine-square settlement plan of the Puritan colonists was designed and surveyed by colonist John Brockett.,

2. Charleston, SC; British Settlement 1692

The history of slavery, the earliest rebellions (Stono), and the design of this settlement encapsulate the frontier “foothold” bitten into the edge of the new world.

3. Philadelphia, PA; British Settlement 1683

Beyond the establishment of designs for foothold containment designs, the use of the grid as a symbol of infinite power over the landscape will dominate.

300 Years

4. New Orleans, LA, French Settlement, 1722

The French Quarter of New Orleans represents insight into how the design of a place produces a sense of unique environmental value in the natural environment.  It was located and remains viable as a place unaffected by seasonal flooding or a 100-year storm surge.  A brief look at the Elevation Map .pdf from the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center and its Flood Map the immediate lesson is clear – the original community – the French Quarter along the Mississippi River remained dry.

5. San Antonio, TX – Spanish Settlement, 1730

The blue line stretching to the horizon tells the story of an extraordinary revival, but just a few blocks east or west of this well-channelized canal is the opposite. The multiple view opportunity, and depth of the canal, provide for layers of design. A view from a residence or hotel, a peak over its many bridges and walkways, or a long and entertaining walk along the water’s edge reveals hundreds of creative responses of all kinds.

6. Savanna, GA – British Settlement, 1733

Part One entitled “Thinking Small in a Big Way” in Robert Gratz’s “The Living City” highlighted the work of Lee Adler in the first chapter, “Process is People”. She highlights his preservation model of buy, sells with preservation restrictions, and starts again with a story. of the Savanah Gray bricks and the Marshall Row houses.  Bought for their bricks at $6,000, Adler took them for $9,000 and when asked by the demolition company where he would like the bricks, he replied “

300 Years

7. Missouri City, MO, 1836

The design for Missouri City did not develop. 

8. Lake Forest, IL 1856

The train takes less than an hour to ride north from the Amtrak Station in downtown Chicago to Lake Forest and the Market Square Station. All along the route, the investor will find parking lots for its riders.

9. Garden City, NY 1870

There are seven buildings with origins linking the rolling countryside of Long Island to its past.  The name Garden City is used throughout this area.

10. Pullman IL, 1880-84

The building of a model industrial town by George Pullman was practical enough for the south section to be recognized in the National Register of Historic Places in 1969 and by 1972 the City’s Landmarks Division for its historical importance. This success was strong enough to bring the north section into the fold in 1993.

The image formed well over a century later is of the mix of moderately dense land uses where schools, shops, open space and public transportation yield a vision of the small town in the otherwise vast urban landscape of the Chicago South Side.

11. Chautauqua, NY 1880

Brigid Gallagher’s photograph of the Chautauqua Institution reveals the vision of life on a small lake as a community in the western New York lake district.

12. Winter Park, FL 1884[i]

The terrain is 90-100 ft. above sea level. A train station created this resort community north and east of Orlando. The rebuilding building of it saved it from decline.

13. Bronxville, NY 1889

Bronxville is an affluent village within the town of Eastchester, New York, in the United States. It is located approximately 15 mi north of midtown Manhattan in southern Westchester County. At the 2000 census, Bronxville had about 6,800 people on one square mile to yield that density. Bronxville presented the perfect suburban image to the world for decades.

100 Years

In 1915 Patrick Geddes, a mentor of Lewis Mumford published Cities in Evolution.  This work led Geddes to become the father of regional planning.  The five cities below provide a cross-section of choices made to produce a successful residential community. 

14. Gary, IN 1905

Gary, IN was a decision of the United States Steel Corporation to build “the first example of the deliberate application of the principles of scientific location of industry.”  Known as its “urban experiment” designed to remove the barriers that separated people. US Steel allocated millions for projects; however the company took a limited role in town planning in preference to staying in the business they knew.[ii]

15. Beverly Hills, CA, 1906

The rise and fall of mass transit services e.g. Red Cars and Pacific Electric is one of the more interesting experiences when dealing with the origins of this community.  If this system proved to grow and be sustainable, what would the community be like today?

16. Forest Hills, NY 1911

18. Kohler, WI 1916
19. Mariemount, OH 1923

Mary Emery was Marymount’s founder and benefactor.  John Nolen was its planner.  The “short blocks”, mix of rental and owner-occupied housing is a predecessor to New Urbanism “style” revisions.

20. Happy Valley, TN 1927

Image ID:       25646

Subjects:         Dairy products industry; Buildings; Bottles; Curiosities & wonders

Place:     Elizabethton (Tenn.)

Description:    Happy Valley Creamery Building. Brick with arched entrance way. Above entrance is a giant milk bottle with light fixtures affixed to the top

https://goo.gl/maps/TRy6ZGoZrbybc1Td7   google link

The name, tiny churches, working homesteads and small farms on the edge of the Great Smokey Mountains bring this place to the list. As a guardian community to a great wilderness, this community and others like it should be empowered to protect places such as the Nantahala National Forest

20. Sunnyside Gardens, NY 1928

The architect of a community wanted people to share a common backyard area. It was away from the street where the children and people could play. After a few years of this idyll, the community built fences.  Then attempts to bring this value back began again. Books on the subject will come to the social structure of neighborhood cycles.

21. Chatham Village, PA 1931

Two names are all that is required to find the site plan prepared by Clarence S. Stein and Henry Wright. All places created by the principles of the Garden City Movement of the early 20th century. Stein and Wright are on the list, however Chatham requires knowing one thing about the importance of small spaces places in big open places, they were among the first to hide their cars. It is a neighborhood in Pittsburgh just south and well above the nexus of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers. With this location, life in the big city can keeps the wilderness close and the sense of its importance even closer.

22. Kenmore Square Subway 1932  Research

The train incline marks the progression this part of Boston from a swamp to a destination, then a transit station, to one of decline yet it continued to aspire to today’s greatness as it retained the allure of a gateway to the entire city.

23. Greenbelt MD, 1935 Research Rexford Tugwell

Greenbelt, MA was a housing project of the Resettlement Administration in 1935 under authority of the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act providing 885 residences.  The number of applicants for them was nearly 6,000 families. 

To be part of this new community applicants had to meet an income-criteria and demonstrate a desire to develop community organizations. Another 1,000 units were completed for workers in defense programs. In 1941, frame “Defense” houses (picture above) were constructed in response to WWII. After the war, the Greenbelt Veterans Housing Corp. formed to buy them from the federal gov’t in 1952. This group became GHI, Greenbelt’s housing cooperative. (here)

24. Levittown, NY 1947

Construction began on Levittown, NY, in Nassau County in Long Island, New York in 1947. By 1950, Levittown consisted of 15,000 houses with 51,000 residents. The planners and builders were Levitt and Sons. 

Construction was completed in 1955 to bring the total to 17,450 houses for about 75,000 people. At the peak of construction, Levitt and Sons produced one house every sixteen minutes, each sold for $7,450. FHA/VA financing permitted a down payment of $90 and a 25-year mortgage of $58.00 per month.^[iii] People of color new not to bother with an application and many veteran’s swallowed that pain.

25. Pleasantville: Usonia, NY 1947

Frank Lloyd Wright planned this community near the village of Pleasantville, New York. In 1945, a cooperative of young couples from New York City purchased 100-acre rural tract, who sought implementation of the Broadacre City concept.

Wrigte’s organic decentralization of urban life injected architecture into nature to satisfy the human desire to live as part of it. The Broadacre City idea is a design solution toward that end.

26. Park Forest, IL 1947

In celebration of the 2018 Illinois Bicentennial, Park Forest was selected as one of the Illinois 200 Great Places by the American Institute of Architects (AIA Illinois). The village began as a planned community for veterans returning from World War II.

As of the 2010 census, the village had a population of about 22,000 people.

27. Anaheim: Magic Kingdom, CA 1955

Walt Disney’s metropolis of fun was built on wistful film fantasy and futurism on July 17, 1955. The park was built on 160 acres of former orange groves stands to this day with pedigree of care for the wholeness of a community in contrast to basic shelter symbolized by the single-family detached residence.

28. Syracuse: Bayberry, NY 1956

One of the Northeast’s first planned communities The developer offered eight models designs 1,200 homes, ranging in price from $11,000 to $25,000. Homes were constructed 20 to 40 clusters on a total of 650 acres.

29. Paradise Valley, WY 1957

The community was built for leisure as a golf course subdivision along the North Platte River when only 60,000,000 cars were regisered in the service of subdivisions in construction throughout the United States. As of 2015, there were over 260 million registered vehicles.

This type of development was never questioned, the was the peak of the American Century.  Even the thought that the North Platte River would produce floods, and ice jams would not occur.  The desire to be right up against a source of clean water is in the soul. The water edge speaks to everyone. One of the great stories given to people by a river is to explain death.  A child asks, wear did Grandfather go, and her father pulls up a cup of river’s water and hands it to the child and says think of your grandfather like this cup of water, now pour it into the river. He isn’t really gone, but he is part of the river now.  

30. Reston, VA 1962

The next major new town that acquired attention like those begun in the Greenbelt initiative of the 1930s was Reston, VA.  By the early 60s planned communities were in development all over the country. The Works Progress Administration’s programs, the Federal New Communities Program managed by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (1970 – 1983). The Planned Community Archives collection from 1960-2009 at George Mason University contains a substantial record of its development.  Reston has density, on the water.  The aerial left 1976 and on the right 2017 (source)

31. Sun City, AZ 1965
32. Miami Lakes, FL 1962
33. Irvine, CA 1970s
34. Soul City, SC 1970s
35. Cedar Riverside, MN 1970s

Cedar-Riverside was designed by Ralph Rapson (1905-2008).  Tom Fisher, the University of Minnesota’s Dean of Architecture, credits Rapson with humanizing modern architecture saying he “…showed how design is a kind of game that you start with a certain very simple idea and you play with it.  You push and you pull and you open out and fold in and you set rules for yourself and you play with them.”[iv]

Figure 2 – Riverside Plaza

36. Roosevelt Island, NY 1970s

The Present

37. Seaside, FL 1983

The expansion of western civilization across the northern hemisphere into North America has a relatively short history. This review aims at highlighting a few threads of principle that might still be drawn from the disorder represented by the urban mega-regions of today.  From the earliest settlements to the present day there are vivid fragments of community design and development that reflect bits of extremely useful knowledge that require reassembly. New Haven, Charleston, and Philadelphia stand out in contrast to Washington DC and New York as the early capital cities of the nation for many reasons. Perhaps the most apparent is the idea of succeeding as a replicant satellite coupled with a drive to establish an independent identity.

Unique metropolitan identities derive from the economic relationships displayed in the rapid growth of American’s seaports or in its centers of public policy.  The connections produce and support one another yet remain.

The French Quarter of New Orleans represents insight into how the design of a place produces a sense of environmental value in nature.  It was located and remains viable as a place unaffected by seasonal flooding or a 100-year storm surge. 

San Antonio’s design responded to local knowledge, its courtyards and private spaces were constructed to be self-cooling, as was Savanna’s heavily tree-laden squares that remain standing or replaced to this day.  All built and enjoyed well before the comfort of central air conditioning.

Following American independence, several town-center settlements in the pre and post-civil war era mark the idea of retaining a close sense of community to support artisan values as a way of life and less as a pathway to the nearest retail outlet. The artisan settlements around the Steinway Piano Factory in Queens, New York City slipped away.  The name “Steinway” still speaks this artisan history and now the struggle to produce quality that transcended its place.

Make no mistake about the contextual value of a product that speaks to the market with an influence born of the place that created it. What would be lost when this place is lost? It would separate the company from a vast market just in a radius of just 30 minutes. It cuts into the power of innovation because the place matters. Value is lost in separating place from product and a name can be easily replaced.

A similar struggle speaks to families owning their ‘souls’ to company stores in towns across the United States. What we have learned is that placemaking mattered to the company that built Pullman, IL or Steinway in NYC. Thus, the question of why places matter cannot ignore its importance as a human value whether that place creates a fine piano or 16 tons of mined coal. Steinway has managed to reinvent itself, while coal mine communities have yet to discover a plan.

In the mid-1980s The Steinway Company had lost the interest of its in retaining workers as part of an artisan village. Rapid growth, economic ups and downs made retaining a community environment difficult to sustain with the onset of globalized and mechanized production. Staying in the business of building pianos and not neighborhoods, slowly perhaps unknowingly let the idea of the community go.

Perhaps diversification was unattractive and offers of greener pastures, brand new homes and greater mobility competed too effectively. The company’s complaints to city officials fell to the din of NYC’s manufacturing crisis. Buyers interested in seeing how their very expensive instruments were constructed entered a neighborhood that exhibited shabby conditions, disinvestment, commercial vacancies, poor schools and bad roads. This reflected poorly on the company and its product. It was nearly lost, but in this case the company survived with the revival of Steinway as a place in which to live, work and play. The advent of mixed-use land policies, as-of-right, performance industry and human health and safety became a new standard, not from government innovation but from a company that understood the value of place and fought for it.

The Duany and Plater-Zyberk Architects replication of a “typical American town” has received an abundance of “why didn’t we think of that” kudos for reminding everyone of things lost by the extraordinary economic expansion of the American century.

In contrast to Marymount, OH a look at Dublin, OH will be instructive. Entrenched in the idea of density lies the complex rules associated with assigning value to the transfer of development rights (TDR) from one party to another.  However, before getting into the “eyes glazing over” joy of TDRs, an example would be useful.

David Dixon, a well-known planner with the firm Goody, Clancy & Associates (Boston) has worked tirelessly to promote the benefits of density. Firms operating in the suburban Midwest “mega region have two problems, one is defined by the “shrinking cities” in this region and the other are the suburbs that once drew their identity from these places. “We are a quiet little community just outside of “Pittsburgh, PA” or just north of “Detroit, MI” or near “Youngstown, OH.”

Reaching out to design firms seek the skills needed to establish a new identity, but the bridge they are encouraging people to cross is a long one.  In this sense, Dixon’s project along Bridge Street in the suburbs in Dublin, Ohio offers an excellent opportunity for observation of suburban identity. It is just north and west of Columbus, OH – a city that has yet to face a wave of disinvestment, however by 2010 the rate of annexations became slow enough to reveal a shrinking population.

Places such as Dublin represent every challenge a suburban commercial zone faces. A brief look at Google Earth using “Bridge Street & Riverside Drive, Ohio” will illustrate the conditions that suggest the need for a radical urban design solution.  In 2010, the design encourages multiple “in/out” car trips from lot-to-store-to-lot all within a few hundred feet. The project started when a downward shift in the demand for single-family housing produced by rising costs and concerned city managers.  They wanted the city to remain “housing-competitive” and attractive. Dixon and his team proposed a higher density of 40–60 units per acre to revitalize the area without disturbing the surrounding single-family market. A floor area ratio (FAR) of 1.5 (* lot area) would produce buildings from three to five stories. This addition to the market would absorb existing demand for rental housing in the market. It would add density and diversity. Traffic congestion would decline with increased “walk to” services and amenities that were already plentiful in this upper-income community. The most recent iteration in greater density is here (2018).

Here is a twist to retain. Dublin initially received a “Walk Score” of 82 using the address 20 Bridge Street in July 2010 (Walk Score for 20 Bridge St.)  A few months later, and much said about updating the database it dropped to 74 in November 2010 but it retains is “very walkable” status.  One more building was added and it’s 83.

The score ranges between 0 and 100 using measures that count the number of places you can walk to for any address. The score is dependent on the number of businesses that use the Google Business listing service and the participation of local business and institutions is quite high. The score suggests that residents can “accomplish most daily errands on foot”. The urban design on the other hand promotes the opposite. This makes a place such as Bridge Street worthy of documentation and analysis, because, if consumers can walk, why don’t they? The developers want to create “a district.” Will it get there?

Walk Score   Description

90–100       Walkers’ Paradise

                      Daily errands do not require a car

70–89         Very Walkable

                      Accomplish most errands on foot

50–69         Somewhat Walkable

                      Some amenities within walking distance

25–49         Car-Dependent

                      A few amenities within walking distance

0–24           Car-Dependent

                      You can walk from your house to your car

Walking the Walk: How Walkability Raises Housing Values in US Cities, (CEO’s for Cities) reviewed 94,000 real-estate transactions in 15 markets. In 13 of those markets, the more walkable communities correlated with higher value real estate. The study supports the idea of development that includes the option to use a car less often. [v]

Monitoring Dublin’s efforts in the Bridge Street District has an added benefit created by the adjacency of Scioto River. In Janary 2005, it was just a half foot short of Major Flood Stage. Just five years (January 1999) earlier, it was at its record low of 0.0 feet.

Extreme events from “flood to drought” stages are associated with climate change and the prospect of hazardous weather conditions.  States just south and west of Ohio have experienced far greater impacts. This would suggest site consolidation choices through the implementation of transfer of development rights (TDR) or similar methods that advance the livability and survivability of places like Dublin using the solutions that greater density might offer Bridge Street.

Density Reduces Risk

Once land is permanently or routinely “underwater”, the value shifts as a parcel with a range of development possibilities into a “land-areas” with unknowns.  The underwater metaphor also describes mortgage default impacts, as one default affects the value of all in the comparable value matrix of real estate assessments.  

The idea of a transfer of development potential fixes it at a predetermined rate per square foot, thus reducing risks. A TRD agreement provides a mechanism for the separation of this development potential from one property to another property. Historically these transfers are adjacent site-to-site agreements to achieve a specific end such as the preservation of a heritage site, the production of vast open space that may flood on occasion, or for the encouragement of residential land uses that address affordability and social diversity objectives or “all of the above”. A second approach to the transfer of development potential involve zone-to-zone agreements designed to protect or expand areas sensitive to environmental disruptions or to preserve areas for agricultural productivity or sustain the integrity of a water supply.

While complex in fixing value, the initial agreements are relatively low cost insurance policies that include “rights to buy and the rights to sell” using clocks and triggers that mandate the transfer of development value from site to site or zone to zone. This may or may not include the state’s right to eminent domain as an adjudicator of value.

Typically, the buy/sell relationship develops when the land value of a property exceeds the use value of the structure on the land in question, or the land and building are part of a larger site assembly to accomplish this end. Stimulants include changes in land use policy that increase floor area, new techniques in construction, and the vision and drive of major real estate development corporations.

 The assumption in the transfer of development rights is the increase in density. For this reason, most transfer agreements are in dense urban areas such as New York City, the data for markets is sufficient to fix a cost to a location. The legislative framework is established against litigation and protected by precedent. Unlike their suburban counterparts, the urban public sees balancing growth with preservation as unthreatening.

In this framework, Dublin is on the edge of a density debate. As a development vehicle, increasing density in areas of existing density works. Public opinion regarding the uncertainties of density and the undertow of speculation create counterproductive conditions in outlying areas useful to Dublin.[vi]  As the map sketch of Columbus (large red square) illustrates, Dublin is inside the “beltway”.  It can contribute to the growth and development of a dense walkable metropolis with a significant range of similar “core centers” (small red squares) all accessible within a few minutes using a dedicated mass transit system.

Density Advances Empathy
Ending “off-the-shelf” practices with life-sharing strategies

In closing this chapter on the rise of the American city, the rise of urbanism as an idea might reach toward a symbiotic embrace of the biosphere. The awareness of “extinction-like” events is a rapidly expanding social experience. The knowledge capital needed to rewrite the earth/human contract may rise from this awareness, but can it, or will it build a regime to address the reciprocal embrace of a non-toxic urban world?

If humans share a positive emotional and intelligent association with other humans, and it seems they do, then the growth of extinction-like events becomes a central concern.  What effort is correct to affirm this as fact? Is it a matter of resolving mismanagement issues? Is it possible to unravel the link between manmade and natural disasters? We know one main thing.  No can stop the assignment of a price for a product or a service. Price setting is the driver.

The answer is obvious — apply the price function to all life forms.  Despite the banality of this point, trees do not write checks. However, things like a tree’s thermal, or sequestration value could stand for a pen and check in hand, but not yet.  The “zoo-era” view of nature serving humans is changing. The issues are more complex than individual animal proteins, random bacterium, and rapidly mutating viruses because they are all connected.

Entering vast new era of genetic ambiguity is taking the world well beyond Darwinian “fitness”. The first stumbling steps into symbiotic knowledge of life builds on uncontrolled variables. It is the only way to yield a sense of what remains unknown. 

Breaking out of the zoo view of nature also requires a form of “life-is-understanding” science. Think of it as a philosophy of technology.  To further this objective, steps to end contamination is a required first step.  To do so it will be necessary to produce an urban equivalent of a “clean room”. 

To yield to the existence of a fully natural world, it will be necessary to make the city as a thing apart and to rethink every input and outcome down to the parts per million. Prior to the discussion of this challenge and the efforts already underway, a sense of this idea as a progression in human evolution toward technical augmentation is helpful.[vii]

When natural systems fail, so do complex communities. Dense urban societies provide “the station” required to improve the management of human wants and desires. The loss or long term disruption of these stations reveal three essential urbanizing functions.

• Relationships formed by a local capacity, such as a shouting distance becomes definitive.
• The second is made of ways to ritualize forces larger than the whole and to create resilience
• The third is made of the cultures and languages of the nation states.

As a progression in the physical and social organization of humanity, these functions have embraced the idea of a whole earth over several thousand years. The entity formed is composed of those who can include their tribe, their God and their national identity in the context of a larger system.  

The demand of a global society built by cities is a stimulus to this view of a whole. The cities can provide for diverse earth and a natural world as a thing apart, yet closely edged and entangled in to the city.  As a chronicler of of wondrous natural diversity, the city is a harbinger of a bounty of life beyond measure. 

Prathima Manohar, the founder of The Urban Vision had the opportunity to interview Peter Head in July of 2010 as a director of Arup.[viii]  His runs the Planning and Integrated Urbanism unit responsible for combining planning, economics and policy, transport, environmental consulting and sustainable development. One of the high profile Arup projects involves the development of China’s Eco Cities. The objective is to build cities run exclusively on renewable resources. The engineering outcomes envisioned suggest a naturalized urban environment fully decontaminated of old wasteful systems. Peter noted in the interview that one of the most notable experiences might be “the quiet” caused by the replacement of combustion engines with electric motors powered by renewables. The electric charge, of course, will come from power generating stations and while cleaner, the jury is out on whether the use of renewable sources can include power for personalized transit vehicles in addition to everything else.

At the current rate of consumption, continued growth in the demand for resources is likely to yield a zero-sum equation on emissions and pollution. The current client group aimed at the production of large generating stations cannot rely on renewable energy sources. This means smaller solar systems and natural sources for power (wind, water, and waste-to-energy) will require a land use placement within a vast regional grid that is not “station” based.

There is one last caveat on the idea of recognizing “density as empathy”.  All the examples offered throughout the world remain “client-based” and “market driven” involving various combinations of public and private investor evaluations. There are no international panels charged with design and development initiatives and therein lies the problem of setting an appropriate pace in the face of improbable deadlines, driven by threat assessments of the planet’s nation state arrangement.

Chinese officials with responsibilities to serve the most rapidly urbanizing nation-state on the planet sought to move through and Eco-City process to prove a point on need, but it proved incapable of putting that proof into the pudding. 

The world has yet to experience the taste, smell or sound of a city free of fossil fuels. The original aim of Arup’s client, the Shanghai Industrial Investment Corporation (SIIC), was to have the first phase of the Eco-City Dongtan’s development completed ahead of the 2010 Shanghai Expo.  The project lost impetus will miss this deadline by a decade or more. Nevertheless, the tools and techniques developed for Dongtan led Arup to conduct technology-transfer “workshops” via commissions with Wanzhuang Huzhou, Zhu Jai Jao, Tangye, and the Changxindian Community in China. Apparently in northern China, the Singaporean and Chinese governments are also working on the ‘Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-city’ which has drawn on the Dongtan ideas and methodology. Other planned eco-cities include Huangbaiyu, Nanjing and Rizhao.

[i] By Meloaraujo [<a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0″>CC BY-SA 4.0</a>], <a href=”https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Winter_Park_Station_IMG_1444.jpg”>from Wikimedia Commons</a>

[ii] City of the Century: a history of Gary, Indiana, James B. Lane pp. 24-30

[iii] Corden, Carol. “Planned Cities in Britain and America.  Beverly Hills: Sage Publishing, 1977, pp. 210-211; Jackson, Kenerth Crabgrass Fronter: The Suburbanization of the United States, NY: Oxford University Press, 1985, pp. 234-37.

[iv] Source: http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/03/31/rapson/

[v] A presentation in Dublin by David Dixon is at this URL http://www.dublin.oh.us/bridgestreet/ his paper is here: Using Density to Create Livability (PDF)  and this is a useful blog that tracks the production of design approaches called: Walkable Communities 

[vi] See: Bruening, Ari D “The TDR Siren Song: The problems with transferable development rights and how to fix them.”  Copyright (c) 2008 Florida State University Journal of Land Use & Environmental Law 423

[vii] One of my college readings was, A Systematic Theology, by Paul Tillich.  He described “astonishment” as the root of his philosophy.  He wrote about evolution in broad terms by describing life as embedded in the geological structure of the earth, as “the soup” of it became biological and through continuous change and specialization, the earth produced human life with a psychological dimension.  This added the capacity for self-reflection offering “outside of self” experiences and empathy.  As a system, this progression defines a larger, presumably more complex system that in Tillich’s theology emerges as spiritual dimension, one that is capable of transcending time.

[viii] It is good to see the humanity of Peter Head in these brief excerpts: Part1 http://bit.ly/akwkFT; Part 2: http://bit.ly/9aeJ1a; Part 3 http://bit.ly/9nkqg9; Part 4 http://bit.ly/dwqmhe