New Urbanism in Memphis and Atlanta

Twice I read Derek Merrill & Beau B. Beza's essay in Refractory: a Journal of Entertainment Media. The writers utilize the concept of the "screen" to explore Atlantic Station development in Atlanta, Georgia. Atlantic Station is a environmental urban brownfield redevelopment and reclamation of the 100-year-old Atlantic Steel Mill requiring the removal of 9,000 dump truck loads of contaminated soil. The 138-acres are divided into three zone: mixed use outdoor shopping mall with 6 million SF of office highrise space, mid-rise apartments surrounding a wetland and the IKEA store. Due to the terrain and earth removal, all the public parking is below ground providing much more flexibility in pedestrian space design.

I wrote Merrill and Beza that the screen was a poor choice of words to assist with the analysis. It was a forced metaphor regarding the spatial conception. I visit as many new urbanist places as possible to understand them. The designers conceive these developments as a series of territorial types, which are set next to each other. Each territory has an aesthetic heart (round, linear or grid) that is defined with building facades.

Once leaving the hearts, transitions between territories are very awkward and rely on the road to rudely connect them. The locations of the screens are the empty car zones of garages, parking lots, alleys or highways. The resident and visitor are supposed to mentally ignore these places like the toilet in the mansion. The leftover space is just that.

Harbor Town leftover space. (Frequently praised as multi-use parking)

The key to the spatial failure is the unrelenting demand for tiny heart after tiny heart. Each territory is not provided enough space to establish the vernacular repetition and controlled variation that we understand as a neighborhood or city. Without enough territory for natural repetition, control will be the psychological sense of the place. And control is the generator of discomfort for the some and the source of security for others. For many bloggers - extreme discomfort.

The irony is that the tiny hearts or odd spaces of containment are the moments we seek and remember in the suburban or low-scale urban environments. Somehow when designed, the feeling is control and not joy. The joy arises from the efforts of single person with a little imagination or a failure of coordination in the overall design.

When examining new urbanism, I must always remember that it is a developer's alternative to the gated suburban apartment complex and single-family neighborhood. New urbanism should be judged against the other choice for newness - not the neighborhoods with centuries or decades of demolition and remodeling. Eventually these places will be personalized and the control may dissipate. Or like the highly controlled of designs of late 19th and early 20th century religious retreats or military bases, the control will seem benign and part of another era. The museum viewing or resort dwelling instincts will take hold and replace the judgment standards of neighborhood living.

Recently, I visited Memphis and had the opportunity to spend a couple nights in the River Inn in Harbor Town. Harbor Town is one of the older new urbanist developments in the USA with the first sales in 1991. The mature landscape and some personalization have already emerged. The commercial mixed-use area has a messiness with different building types and scales that humanizes the space. It appears the architects - Loney Ricks Kiss - where designing by accommodation that than preconception. The personalization arises when the overall structure fails to resolve the space and the individual architects, gardens and owners must find a solution. Harbor Town proves the new urbanist system can succeed without the stylistic and spatial tyranny.

Harbor Town site plan on the Mississippi River by LRK.