Krier's humane architecture

Back in 1984, this proto-crunchy con wrote a college paper on Leon Krier for a modern architecture course. While I did well in the course, my paper was not well received. Without realizing it, I had done just about the only transgressive thing one could have done in such a class.

Every crunchy con should have Leon Krier's _Architecture: Choice or Fate_ in his or her library. Acquaint yourselves with the "father" of the post peak oil city. The New Urbanists have already worked out the zoning ordinances and "pattern language" (if you will) for this city.

Enjoy.

It's nice to be able to carry on about Luxembourg and Bremen, which I'm sure are swell places to live, but how realistic is any of this? Aren't skyscrapers a response to the need for high-density land use, which is an inevitable requirement of cities with populations in the millions? Once they're built, they have to be enclosed systems, because you can't ventilate a skyscraper by opening the windows up on the 42nd floor. You have a need to pack huge numbers of people into relatively small spaces, so you're going to need really tall buildings.

Those parts of the DFW Metroplex that aren't high rise are equally hideous--a malodorous, tacky sprawl of endless highways, cheesy big-box stores and malls. I've lived there, so I'm not just disdaining from afar. The Metroplex is not so much a place as a chronic condition. It's horrid.

But what are you going to do with six million people? They have to go someplace. Either they have to go up, or they have to sprawl. And, in the words of Monty Python, "they're both nasty." Living a ten-minute walk from work? Well, okay, I guess if I were going to set up that problem, I'd take the number of people involved and the area of the city and plot it to see if it was even physically possible to create that number of green, crunchy, non-AC (which basically means no taller than 3 stories, or the top floor becomes an oven) dwellings and workplaces within little 3/4-mile-radius hubs. I'm too lazy but I'm sure one of y'all can do the math. It doesn't look promising to me.

Manhattan used to look like South Philly--little row houses and Mom and Pop shops. Population pressure changed it, and will change South Philly too, all in good time. Unlimited population growth is not a good match for quaint historic architecture, resource conservation, and stewardship of the ecology. Oh, but not to worry, McCain will take us all to Mars someday . . . [facepalm]

And another thing. A high-rise Manhattan-like city has a smaller energy footprint per capita than North Dallas or Orange County, CA.

Nobody is going to give up on air-conditioning. We are just going to build new nuclear reactors and coal plants.