|  | | Plaza FAQs | The following questions and answers are from summary notes taken by Jason Miller during a panel discussion during the New Plazas for New Mexico Symposium in October 2001:
Panel Members: Elmo Vaca (sp?), Ivonne Audirac, John Hooker, Stefanos Polyzoides
Opening statement, Ivonne Audirac:
The subtext of the Laws of the Indies is one of conquest. Quick subjugation of the existing culture, destruction; e.g., “whenever possible, destroy the surrounding structures so as to take advantage of building materials.”
Distribution of land plots showed large lots with small lots, which we might interpret as peaceful co-existence of people. This doesn’t necessarily show harmonious living. The laws did show how people should be segregated, however. Some of those small blocks really represented the houses of the most wealthy people and their slaves’ quarters.
Interpretations: How much are we willing to preserve (remember)? How much are we willing to forget?
Q: How do we superimpose the Laws on a highly auto-dependent culture? How do we persuade people to walk instead of drive? Place-making for whom?
Elmo Vaca:
Native Americans have not necessarily lost their sense of place. One group is rebuilding 700-year-old houses and their place of worship. In New Mexico, we never saw the implementation of the regular grid. The streets in Santa Fe’s plaza are crooked; they animate the plaza. New Mexico also has classic Laws of the Indies plazas. And plazas that have changed and evolved over time. How do we deal with the regularity of plazas (square and rectangular)? I was pleased to see the horseshoe-shaped plaza in Stefanos’ presentation. A canted plaza, a trapezoidal plaza, irregular shapes would be good variation. Should be a theater, a place to play out their lives. How to furnish the plaza?
Q: (from audience member regarding modernity vs. the present) “I would be embarrassed to admit to my children that the only solutions I can come up with for present problems are from the past.”
Stefanos Polyzoides:
The reason urban renewal has failed is because people are not looking at their past. I’m interested in continuity of culture, establishing a balance of the city and nature. Civano had an extremely aggressive plan for the site plan and then the buildings themselves. The future is a dead-end if we continue on the path we’re on. It’s already falling apart; it isn’t sustainable.
Q: How do all the parties come to agreement as to how a site should be developed?
Stefanos Polyzoides:
The best projects are carried out in the charrette process. That’s how the decisions are made. The new urbanism is not a religion, it’s a charter created by individual practitioners who are incumbent to create good places.
John Hooker:
Our project went against the paradigm—all buildings were attached housing with a 2-acre orchard at the center. The market was people who think the history of the United States is suburbia. No center. After the incident in Columbine, the students left flowers on their deceased classmates’ cars; there was no place to gather. The economic structure today is moving toward a “downtown in a box” view. Who are the stakeholders? The public wants beautiful places—not shiny, mirrored towers next to them. The views are very conservative when asked how they want to live. The F-14 pilots I talk to say they want to live in a little bungalow with a swing on the porch. Some say they don’t want a “park” near their house because then the kids will hang out there. Or the gangs. The challenge is to get people to think about a plaza center, a pedestrian realm. How to overcome the alienation, the sense of disconnection to their neighbor next door?
Q: Where did we lose the idea that a planner might actually lay out a grid of small blocks, and where do we go now (and not be dictated to by the local municipality)?
Stefanos Polyzoides:
Think on a piecemeal basis. Build it bit by bit, because the master plan is so overwhelming. We replaced the planning profession with a series of codes. Now, everything we build creates more and more disconnection, more problems with nature, more destruction of the kind of fabric that many of us associate with our civilization. CNU is attempting to reform the zoning codes so that we don’t have to fight a thousand battles every time we try to build something. The point is, we have a “one-shoe fits all” system of planning that is churning out crap and it’s going to take 25 to 50 years to get rid of it. All of the interests involved are absolutely entrenched: Have you tried to reform the highway lobby? We’ve also exported this model to the rest of the world.
Elmo Vaca:
Around the mid-century, Americans lost their concept of design. But in the state of Vermont, citizens got flexible-design standards adopted for their highways, which had been slicing their towns to pieces. We need to take action to change the standards and codes.
Ivonne Audirac:
Perhaps we should lobby the carmakers to build smaller and more efficient cars that take up less space and use fewer resources.
Reference: J. B. Jackson essay. |
| | |
|
