How to Build a Village

SUBURBS WERE INVENTED TO SELL CARS.

Toward the end of World War II, American business and government leaders saw a second Great Depression looming if government spending ended and millions of soldiers returned home. They decided to turn the war-winning industries of oil, jeeps and tanks into the post-war civilian industries of oil, cars and bulldozers - to go from fighting a war to building the new American suburbs. To make the shift they legislated a radical change in how humans live - spreading out human activities so the mundane chores of daily life required a car.

The economic plan worked and for over half a century the US economy boomed. What's good for General Motors is good for America. Without understanding why, other countries adopted the American way - even countries that did not make cars or pump oil. While the plan was good for America's post-war economy, suburbs proved to be an immeasurably bad use of resources - both natural and in how people live.

VILLAGES ARE DESIGNED FOR QUALITY OF LIFE

What happens if we design for quality of life rather than to sell cars? What would the zoning look like? How would it work? In this 256 page book with over 400 color photographs, this question is examined in detail. The answer is a Village defined as a 5,000 to 10,000 population, self-contained, high-density community built on 100-400 acres around multiple plazas with cafes, shops, workplaces and artist guilds and no cars within - all is within a 10-minute walk with a motorpool for the cars, outside the Village gates. Local governments can think of the Village as an environmentally, socially, culturally and economically sustainable, self-contained, billion-dollar, greenfield, mainstream investment that brings in over 2,000 new, quality jobs worth over $100 million a year. Future residents of the Village can think of it as a wonderful, thriving and fulfilling place to live.

Each part of a Village makes another part work. The keystone is its own local economy. With a local economy, the Village is micro-zoned - everything people need is within walking distance... homes, work, shops, cafs, schools and recreation. This removes need for cars, which lowers pollution and cost of living. No cars results in smaller roads, more human-scaled, lower-cost and better land-use. Elders need not move to retirement homes when they no longer drive. Children can play in the streets and plazas where working adults keep an eye on them. Small streets require fireproof buildings (no large fire trucks), thus the book proposes a design that is also rot-free and super-insulated. Plazas provide the perfect setting to Slow Food - enriching social interaction. Add the cultural enrichment of arts guildhalls and the Village becomes more interesting. Another social element include parallel market affordable housing, homes for service workers, teachers, youth, elders, artists - the glue that holds a community together.

This book is necessary to challenge a mindset. The ideas are simple, conservative, (meaning proven, time-tested, not risky) and should be obvious. However, experts spent 50 years inventing a complex, radical, and problem-ridden way for people to live now so embedded in mainstream thinking that it takes a book, with systematic details, to show a way out.The book will be judged not on numbers of copies sold but Villages built.

Buy good shoes and a good bed, you'll spend most of your life in one or the other.

If we extend that thought to our wider habitat, to everything that surrounds us in daily life, we notice the extent to which our environment has become generic and bland. A shopping mall in Italy looks the same as one in Australia, and for the mundane chores of daily life, we need a car. Character, authenticity and the rich flavours of life seem to have been lost as we packaged our daily lives. None of this happened by accident. It came about because Americans invented the suburb. They invented the suburb to sell cars and petroleum.

To create a wonderful place to live, we need to start with a different plan, one that asks different questions. Can we solve today's problems without creating problems for tomorrow? Can we construct a habitat not to concoct a market for cars, but to provide for Quality of Life? What does it mean to create a human-scaled community in which people of all ages and interests can thrive?

In this manual, Claude Lewenz explores what such a place would look like if it was designed for quality of life. Using a language of patterns developed in 1977, he weaves timeless patterns with new opportunity offered by technology. The outcome is a large Village; one with many plazas, where people work, shop, meet at cafes, conduct all the affairs of daily life within a ten-minute walk. No cars inside the village walls. Such a Village has its own local economy; it can stand on its own.

This handbook does not dictate what the Village should look like. Rather it offers a process whereby people create their own - so each Village becomes unique, reflecting the character of the people who will live there.