Courtesy of The Good City, this speech by Andres Duany should be required viewing. The speech looks like it happened in the early 1990’s, back when the idea of community planning (instead of traffic engineering) was completely revolutionary. My favorite picture is the tract housing adjacent to the strip mall that is separated by a wall, so that even if you can look out your back window right at the store, you have to drive to it. Some of these things seem obvious to people interested in urban planning today; however, sprawl is still being built, so hopefully this information can continue to spread.
Thanks for posting that lecture. That’s exactly the kind of formal urban planning information I haven’t gotten into yet. That seems like a great intro and I’d love to read some more in-depth books. He mentioned one in the lecture that I’ll have to check out, but do you (or anybody else) have recommendations for books to read about urban planning?
Suburban Nation is the book by Andres Duany. Good stuff.
This was an awesome series of lectures from, I think 1991. The most interesting part to me was when he discussed what you need for good pedestrian life – buildings without a setback (so they form sort of a wall), plus a line of cars parked along the sidewalk, to buffer pedestrians from the cars driving on the road.