9 Part Lecture on Mixed Use Planning by Andrés Duany

Just some personal notes I’ve made on this very interesting lecture on the benefits of mixed use planning.

• Part 1: Praise for San Antonio’s downtown. Pattern of suburban sprawl. Why can growth be undesirable? Anatomy of a planned community, and its traffic problems.
• Part 2: Single Use versus mixed use planning. Pedestrian-hostile planning. Building highways does not solve the traffic problems: you must shorten or eliminate trips.
• Part 3: Separation of uses commercial/residential/offices is unnecessary. Planning codes restrict mixed use. Pedestrian life requires a barrier of safety from the road, such as a row of parked cars.
• Part 4: Suburban pods segregate people of different incomes. Communities require people of all range of income. “McMansions” only give the illusion of privacy and individuality.
• Part 5: Backyard cottages/granny flats (I love tiny homes). Interspersing low income housing with middle class, and making them part of regular society, rather than engineering slums.
• Part 6: Two guidelines for promoting a “sense of place”. 1) When buildings line up to make walls. 2) When the height:width ratio isn’t past 1:6. Using lines of trees to correct streets that are too wide. Current planning which favours cars over people leads to impersonal garage faced houses. Benefits of back alleys.
• Part 7: Suburban planning is full of wasted money. Mania for the “dead worm” street system. Using terminating vistas to create interesting streets. Necessity of landmarks. Changes in road planning that are hostile to pedestrians.
• Part 8: Highways vs avenues in the city. The effect of urban sprawl on seniors and children.
• Part 9: Moving away from vertical infrastructure to horizontal. We’re building gold plated highways. Long commutes increase the length of our workday, and decrease our quality of living.