Urban Alternatives (1973)

It's pretty obvious that our cities have problems. Real problems. We can all see the crowding, the decay, the confusion, and ugliness. It's easy to complain about the way the city is now, but what do we think it should be? [Music] The city is a man-made environment. This is where most of us live and work. Over the years, people built this urban environment, and they built it for other people to use and enjoy. For decades, well-intentioned efforts at urban renewal have attempted to make this environment more suitable for the use and enjoyment of people. Many of these efforts failed. If housing downtown decayed, build new housings had left over, plant grass, call it a park. But this approach to urban problems hasn't worked. If the city is to be the kind of human environment we all want it to be, some alternatives are required. [Music] In response to the failures of the past and the challenges of the present, a new profession has evolved. These are architects, urban planners, designers, landscape architects, sociologists, traffic engineers, and others. And they're working together as a team. They call themselves urban environmentalists and their work is to bring positive change to the city in many kinds of ways. [Music] [Music] [Music] A city is always being changed and adapted in response to the needs of the people who use it. What these people are trying to do is to ensure that the changes are really improvements and that the changes are the things the community wants. They work on shopping centers, housing developments, parks, and entirely new communities. They study entire municipal areas or small neighborhoods. They plan where new growth should happen and where things ought to be left alone. By working together, they can develop ways for recycling the decayed core of an old city or plan a small neighborhood park. But whatever they do, they think about the needs of the community, about the things people say they want in their city. The result is change. And in small ways, in cities all over the country, things are happening that make the city a more humane environment, a place people can even enjoy. [Music] There are a number of basic problems facing almost every American city and streets like this one are one of them. For many of us, this is the only place we had to go shopping. You've got to have a car to drive from one store to the next, from one stoplight to the next. It's ugly, chaotic, and inefficient. But it's all that is available in many cities in this country. Like so many of our urban mistakes, it wasn't really planned. It just happened. There are several good alternatives to the commercial strip and this is one of them. It's possible to make shopping areas very pleasant, attractive places for us to use, like this mall in Colombia, Maryland. It draws people from 30 m away. People who could shop at nearer conventional places, but who like this environment much better. You know, the best way to see what people like is to watch people to to go to to sim similar establishments uh and see what they're doing, see what is lacking. The best way to learn is to build on other people's mistakes and to study if something is successful, exactly what makes it successful. and how can we make it even more so? The mall seems to be tremendously successful. There people there really genuinely having fun enjoying the space and what it has to offer almost completely aside from the the shops and stores that form the space. It almost becomes a recreational facility. This kind of mall isn't the perfect answer to every commercial street in every city, but it is one alternative. [Music] >> I think we have over relied upon one mode of transportation, that is the car. We've completely relied upon the automobile to the detriment of other more intelligent ways of moving people around the city. To me, that's that's the problem. uh you could say that historically that cities have been uh shaped by the kinds of transportation modes that we've relied upon. It was primarily pedestrian say in the last century and then the street car came along and really affected the cities and uh now we're into the automobile. When you have an automobile city, you know, everything is accessible and there's no logic to the to land planning and so it's just all this it's complete sameness throughout the entire city and complete sprawl. and we need automobiles. We just think that other things should be included in in the pie. >> A city needs all kinds of transportation facilities. Each mode has its own requirements. Pedestrians can move about in safety if their needs are considered. But we need buses, bikes, cars, and rapid transit to make sure that all the people are able to move around in their environment. If you find that one car can carry one person and one bus can carry 40 people, it would be a much better alternative to utilize a bus from a system standpoint. >> In many cities, alternative forms of transportation have been allowed to decay as the automobile dominated the urban pattern. Often bus service was the first victim. But a few years ago, bus service on this major commute route was improved to attract people out of their cars. This is the peak of the rush hour. Yet, traffic moves swiftly because each bus replaces 40 cars. An alternative would be just uh like they're trying to do with BART. That's a fantastic alternative. And if that can work in many other cities in the country, I think we can have a much better city. This is BART, the Bay Area Rapid Transit System. The first rapid rail system built in this country in 60 years. It links the major communities of the San Francisco Bay area. Other cities are either building or planning similar systems. And already fast, efficient, economical, rapid transit is changing patterns of growth in urban communities. [Music] An unfortunate consequence that we're faced with in development today in cities is the destruction of some of our fine, really fine old buildings. buildings with a heritage and good design. Now, you can't save all of those. You can't always keep those buildings. You can't save everything. But certainly, we could be much more discriminating in in our removal. >> I don't always like restoration. Restoration to me means to return it to its original appearance almost as a museum piece. I like the idea of recycling that that way it doesn't end the life of the building. The life the life of the building continues and it may house a different function but essentially it's it's a new useful and up-to-date function and activity happening within an old structure and you kind of get the combination of the old and new rather than just a a dead monument. Gear Delhi Square was was designed to be the backdrop or a stage set for people's activities. It was an attempt to take existing buildings and recycle rather than restore those buildings. Keep the history and the tradition of those buildings but apply new up-to-date modern functions within their walls and and thereby keep the thing current. Keep the thing alive. alive today but very much attached with its past and its history and it it serves as a set. It serves it gives a lot of opportunities and and choices to the to the participants. [Music] When you go to to Dear Delhi Square, you become a participant. You take part in something there. You utilize the seven. [Music] Too often there is no refuge from the noise and activity of the city street. No places to rest, to eat lunch, to enjoy the sunshine, or just visit. For every car, every automobile, we should have one tree and for every truck, we should have two trees planted just to try and overcome some of the pollution problem. I happen to be interested in in the planting that goes on, but um I need to work with designers so that we can do it together. If they're developing a certain area or interested in making some alternate suggestions on a solution, we work together and we talk about it so that the plants are very much a part of the overall design. Plants in an urban environment are carefully chosen to solve the particular problems. Uh if there's wind or salt air or problem soils, um the plants have to be chosen that will survive these local conditions. I think we need growing things to balance our lives. We need open space and trees and grass and flowers to offset the paving and the walls and the noise and the confusion. Everybody needs a chance to be quiet and sit down and just do nothing to daydream. I think it's a part of our lives. I don't think there's anything wrong with doing nothing once in a while. [Music] This is urban sprawl. The individual houses, all alike, squeezed onto the smallest legal lot. There's no public open space, no trees left, no natural features of the landscape left after the bulldozers. It's a very poor way to use land and to house people. People want and need a lot more from their residential communities, but all they get from the traditional development is shelter. >> We know people want more than the kind of housing that we find in most cities today. The traditional way really abuses the landscape and sometimes this is our fault. Our building laws forces developers to build in repetitive patterns the same lot size and the same kind of house on each lot. And it takes an educated public to force our local governments to provide laws which can allow the developer to build in more creative ways than what is generally available today. Uh but with this new kind of approach, one can rearrange the whole bag of requirements that that you need in housing and and rearrange it in a in a creative way where you could be responsive to the natural features of site as well as to be very responsive to all the needs that people have who live in in that housing area. This is Restston, Virginia. Very different kind of residential community. Restston was designed to do much more than provide housing for its residents. The design of the community was based on an intelligent land use plan. Houses are clustered together which leaves vast areas of undisturbed trees and meadows for recreation and views. Restston, unlike most residential communities, has a beautiful central plaza. People walk here to shop, visit the library or post office, or to have dinner in a restaurant. Reston is a planned environment for people, but it is an environment designed to harmonize with nature. Good things in cities do not happen automatically. It takes great deliberation and public commitment. Public commitment to a new attitude, a quality of living, uh a willingness to work for positive change. It takes greater participation to to produce the the good results that you see in rest Virginia. [Music] It's easy to complain about our cities, about the crowding, the confusion, decay, and noise. But there are alternatives to the problems. And it's possible to make our cities livable, even beautiful environments for all of us. Change in a city is constant. And with public commitment and involvement, that change can mean continuous improvement. But people will have to become much more involved in this process of change, more involved in the design of their own environments if it's ever to happen. And maybe this involvement is the most important urban alternative. [Music] Urban Alternatives, a film by Hans Halverstad. Music by Riley Mccclaclin. We wish to thank Lawrence Halprren and Associates, urban planners and designers of New York and San Francisco for their great cooperation.