Patrick M. Condon - Five Rules for Tomorrows Cities

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Copyright 2019 Patrick M. Condon

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Keywords: adaptability, affordable housing, birth rate, favela, formal city, fractals, green infrastructure, housing, immigration, inequality, informal city, migration, Missing Middle Housing, population, resilience, slum, street grid, sustainability indicators, systems thinking, urban acupuncture, urban district, wage gap

This book is written by the listed author, Patrick M. Condon. However, in this book the pronoun used most often throughout is we rather than I or me, because hundreds of people have participated with me in the scores of urban design projects that inform this book. At this stage its very hard to distinguish which thoughts are mine and which thoughts are theirs. And in the end it doesnt matter. Good urban design is collaborative urban design, where different minds make different contributions in a process where the whole is much greater than the sum of its parts. This is as it should be. For a central theme of this book is that cities are a system, where the interaction of all of its parts creates something larger. And for urban designers that something larger is a sustainable and, insofar as it is possible, an equitable city.

I trust that I have captured the consensus of our thinking, and I apologize if I have strayed too far afield. Many but not all of these people are listed in the Acknowledgments. It would be impossible to list them all because any good urban design comes through the agency of deep and extensive collaboration with many stakeholders. Literally, there have been many hundreds. My apologies to those I missed, but I hope you might recognize some of your thinking in these pages and recall the times when they were voiced or illustrated.

As will be clear from the text, the insights presented here emerged from collaborations over the years with many people. Sadly, there are too many to mention in a comprehensive way. Still, honor requires me to call out at least a few, all in the sequence that they spring to mind rather than any rank order of their importance or the depth of our friendships. I start with Robert Lane of RPA New York, with whom I have enjoyed many adventures, many of them including Bob Yaro, former head of RPA, and Armando Carbonelle, senior fellow at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. Closer to home and partners in many more local adventures, I acknowledge Daniel Roehr, Ron Walkey, Susan Milly, Sheryl Webster, Sara Muir, Kari Dow, Sara Barron, and Ron Kellettall of the University of British Columbia, in various past and present capacitiesfor their part in many charrette exploits. Also a collaborator over many years now is David Beers, founding editor of The Tyee. Next, I thank my children, Alanna, Ryan, Kate, and William, and my grandchildren, Toby, Reese, Jasper, Emery, and Harriet, all of whom are on my mind when Im writing a book like this one, which tries to look into the future and imagine a path to a better world.

In no particular order but included because they have inspired me in ways they may not realize, I thank Doug Kelbaugh, Harrison Fraker, Bob Worden, Warren Byrd, Leslie Van Duzer, Michael Van Valkenburgh, Julius Fabos, Paul Procopio, Colin Cathcart (aka The Franchise), Michael Mehaffy, James Meyer, Dean Cardasis, Hal Moser, Larry Cashin, Madeline OReilly, Mary Herbowie, Ann OSullivan, Neda Roonia, Bob Sykes, Andres Duany, Douglas Duany, James OConnor, Josh Posner, and Paul Saba. Last but not least, I thank my editor at Island Press, Heather Boyer, who many years ago encouraged me to write books for students and practitioners. This book is my third for and with her. I deeply hope that it is worthy of her creative efforts.

This book is dedicated to all students of urban designpast, present, and future. You have such important work to do.

T he purpose of this book is to answer one big question: How can designers of this generation first assimilate and then incorporate ongoing cultural, economic, and ecological changesinterconnected changes occurring worldwideinto their city building work?

In this book, when we use the term urban designers we include anyone involved in the act of city building. This of course includes architects, landscape architects, planners, developers, and public officials. But it also includes the young, who are struggling to understand their fast-changing and increasingly inequitable world, and concerned citizens who want to make a difference in their own communities.

We perceive a real lack of focus in our design field on three cresting cultural waves, waves that are overlapping in ways that are already transforming the city: the worldwide rural-to-urban migration, the collapse of global fertility rates, and the disappearance of the middle class. All three major waves are crossing and combining in intricate ways and will leave a different city in their wake. In fact, the impact of these three waves is already patently clear.