Austin Community Living
Mar 01, 2009 02:34PM
2009-01-20T18:21:57.018-08:00
I never thought city code and pedestrian traffic design could be such a delightful topic. In the following lecture series Andres Duany introduces to city planners of San Antonio the concept of New Urbanism and contrasts it with Urban Sprawl development technique.
One may never consider the possibility of an alternate way of life if the alternate is never an option. But if it was? What if everyone lived within walking distance to their work? or could walk to a local grocery store? Life would be much different and I believe more enjoyable. I know this first hand from growing up in a small town in Washington State that preserved the principles of a quaint Victorian town. Everything from my school, to the beach, to the dentist was within walking or biking distance. And I biked everywhere. It was only on rare occasion that I got a ride from my parents. It simply wasn't necessary. New Urbanism takes the principles that make a small town work, and applies them to any scale of population.
These clips are the first two of a nine part series. To view the rest of the series go to youtube.com and search for: NuHerbAndizm.
Clip 1:
Clip 2:
2008-12-24T00:19:13.414-08:00
I just watched a Youtube interview of a woman who lives in a cohousing project with 33 seperate dwellings. I found her concluding remarks to be encouraging because of their consistency with my own experience in community living. I came into my current household with all kinds of expectations and visions. That our community would be a pseudo-monastic mission of love to our neighborhood, and that we would effect enormous change. But as day to day life set in, and I gained awareness of the corpus of self serving habits I drag around, I decided to change my focus; first work on myself and how I relate to my roommates. Then consider a more outward focus. The solution is probably more nuanced, but at least the general shift in my attitude has given me more peace.
