The square must be “for everyday use, a variety of neighborhood activities, a farmer’s market and programmed events in all seasons… such as fairs, art shows, and small musical performances, etc.“ Largely thanks to this intense community involvement, the Plan’s fundamental standards were clearly articulated. Through innumerable meetings over several years, the neighborhood partnered with Conway (the land owner) and the City to develop the Conway Master Plan to guide future development. For neighborhood residents, the most important element in the Master Plan was a European-style neighborhood square. Conway believed these characteristics would attract the brightest minds to live within close walking distance of their employment at Caltrans.Īll parties emphasized that the public realm must be given the highest priority. Conway was delighted by the challenge of creating a truly urban complete “10-minute neighborhood” where you could live within a 10-minute walk to shops, schools, services, parks, work, and public transit. NW residents immediately became involved, donating thousands of hours to work in meetings with the owners and the City to create a Master Plan that would ensure walkability, human scale, mixed use, and that would connect well to the existing historic district. Twelve years ago, the transportation company Conway, which owned a 25-acre site on the northern edge of the NW District, decided to sell most of the acreage for a new urban neighborhood. This neighborhood also has the city’s highest density in a mix of historic family homes and four to five story apartments. These characteristics are epitomized in Portland’s North West District, where residents are deeply involved in planning and livability issues. Portland, attracts many new residents because of its reputation as a livable, walkable, compact, human scale city, with a strong community spirit. Designing a neighborhood square is not so simple If you have a strong social network, researchers find that you also have a strong “social immune system:” you are less likely to become sick, if you are sick it is less serious, and you live to a riper old age.Ĭommunity, well-being, and public health are strong arguments for creating neighborhood squares. Physical health is dependent on mental health. It is the place where everyone belongs, where you meet friends, and develop a sense of community.ĭaily face-to-face interaction with a variety of other people – friends, neighbors, and familiars – is crucial to individual well-being. His teachings became widely accepted in Austria, Germany, and Scandinavia, and in less than a decade his style of urban design came to be accepted as the norm in those countries.With a mix of local stores and cafes surmounted by apartments that provide “eyes on the square”, shade trees and places to sit, some locally significant artwork and water features for kids to play, a traffic-free European-style neighborhood square can be the heart of a community, the place people come to shop, meet, pass through, where elders and parents keep an eye on children playing. He pointed out the advantages of what came to be know as "turbine squares"-civic spaces served by streets entering in such a way as to resemble a pin-wheel in plan. He called for T-intersections to reduce the number of possible conflicts among streams of moving traffic. He advocated curving or irregular street alignments to provide ever-changing vistas. Sitte proposed instead to follow what he believed to be the design objectives of those whose streets and buildings shaped medieval cities. Sitte strongly criticized the current emphasis on broad, straight boulevards, public squares arranged primarily for the convenience of traffic, and efforts to strip major public or religious landmarks of adjoining smaller structures regarded as encumbering such monuments of the past. The publication at Vienna in May 1889 of "Der Stadtebau nach seinen knstlerischen Grundsatzen" ("The Art of Building Cities") began a new era in Germanic city planning. Camillo Sitte (1843-1903) was a noted Austrian architect, painter and theoretician who exercised great influence on the development of urban planning in Europe and the United States. #Camillo Sitte The Art Of Building Cities Pdf Writer full#Full facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software.
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