Creating the Opportunity for Community

In my first year of planning school, I took a class called "History and Theory of Urban Form". We studied everything from ancient Greece and Rome, to the walled cities of the French Bastides. As the class moved on, we looked at American settlements like Savannah, and the overcrowded slums of the East Coast in the early 1900's. It was interesting to see how people prioritized (ordered) their cities based on what was the most valued thing at that time.

For example, for the Greeks, it was noted that their temples always occupied the highest ground in their cities, allowing for all of the citizens to see the massive buildings from much of the city. The Romans had great landmarks like the Coliseum and the massive oval shaped plaza atop the Capitoline Hill that marked the transition from the forum of old Rome to the new Rome. In Savannah, the city was settled in small gridded neighborhoods with park-like squares regularly interspersed every few blocks, a pattern that was repeated for years as the city continued to expand. In places like New York, the cities were overcrowded and unhealthy, but the main goal was storing a rapidly arriving immigrant population, with little regard to the quality of life they had come to America for. Reaction to the poor living conditions led to city sanitation reform, and eventually to building codes requiring light and air to reach all of the parts of a building.

The development of modern cities often followed patterns of transportation networks, for movement of people or goods, but was still on a somewhat of a neighborhood scale (at least in the US) until after WWII. The pent up housing demand from the Great Depression combined with the easy financing offered for returning veterans and the new Interstate Highway System (started by Dwight Eisenhower) led to the unprecedented horizontal spreading of our cities like never before. The zoning movement that started with sanitation reform and aimed to separate homes from slaughterhouses and steel mills was now separating folks from the corner store, and leaving nothing but isolated subdivisions, many of which were misnamed as "neighborhoods". This type of development pattern has lead to a lot more driving, and density to thin to support mass transit. Those who have studied this a lot longer than I have have noted how this has led to more isolation, and less "community". Funneling all of this traffic from place to place has We end up with residential areas, commercial areas, and of course, the ever-present strip retail centers. Instead of the beautiful boulevards like St. Charles Avenue in New Orleans, we end up with mile after mile of strip malls.

Anyway, back to the point of this post... in that class I was taking about, the History & Theory class, we had a guest lecturer one day, Scott Finn, an Architecture professor at Auburn. He was telling us about a project he had worked on near Birmingham called Mt. Laurel, and that the number one goal was to "provide the opportunity for community." I will probably remember that phrase as long as I remember anything from planning school.

The following summer, I decided to try and incorporate that idea into my own projects, if possible. For example, on the Center Court Apartments renovation project, we decided to rip out the concrete in the courtyard and replace it with a nice grass lawn and a lot more landscaping. At Overlook, it was much more challenging. There was not much room available for any type of landscaped common area, so we decided to build a huge sun-deck out over part of the parking lot. That specific idea was not mine, but rather it came from a friend of mine in the construction business, and it has been a great addition to the project.

I guess I'll close by saying I started the "Community Planning" Master's Program at Auburn with the intention of trying to learn as much as I could in areas that would help me produce better Real Estate projects and ultimately make more money. I wouldn't say that I have abandoned those goals, my idea of what would make a better project and even a better city have been broadened and deepened. I have learned to appreciate the "Community" part of the program and of real life more than I ever imagined that I would. What I have learned has positively affected my life and my projects, hopefully having a beneficial effect on the lives of my tenants and buyers as well.

Thanks for your time,

Chris