ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, April 3, 1996 TAG: 9604030011
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: NEAL R. PEIRCE
THE SECRET to better American neighborhoods is the Five-Minute Popsicle Rule, says Hal Box, former dean of the University of Texas Architecture School in Austin: ``That a child can walk safely from home to buy a popsicle within five minutes.''
And why? To re-create, says Box, the community and freedom we enjoyed before we separated every land use by rigid zoning and became totally dependent on automobiles.
As appealing as the popsicle rule sounds, would most Americans agree with Box?
The standard answer of the real-estate industry has been ``no.'' Its evidence: People are still buying houses on the biggest lots they can afford, in auto-dominated suburbs.
But what if Americans really had a choice? What if they had a say in designing their own neighborhoods, instead of being obliged to take what developers routinely produce?
In Austin, citizens are getting that chance, in a community vision project sponsored by the University of Texas and a Citizens Planning Committee. It began in February, when 44 sometime foes - developers, neighborhood activists and environmentalists - met to design an ``ideal'' Austin neighborhood.
They listed top values for the new neighborhood - safety, convenience, affordability, shade, human scale, transit accessibility, a place for people of all generations. It amounted, says Citizens Planning Committee chair Ben Heimsath, to remarkable ``common ground.''
The new neighborhood's houses, the Austinites decided, should be close together. They asked for small parks, narrow streets and sheltered walkways linked to shops with apartments on their upper stories. Parking would be scattered, including in alleys.
Apartments and town homes would be mixed in. Austin Urban League President Herman Lessard, a team member, explained why: ``Here, people are part of the community. If you live in an apartment and want to buy a home, you can remain in the community you grew up in and love.''
And young adults, the elderly or newly divorced people on tight budgets would be able to move from a house into an apartment in their own neighborhood.
Across America, would-be developers of mixed-income, pre-World-War-II-like neighborhoods are having a hard time, facing leery lenders and having to deal with rigid building codes and zoning laws written for today's suburbs.
``Pioneering is very hard,'' says Memphis developer Henry Turley. Today's home buyers often look to housing for investment as much as shelter. They fear uncertainty and ``different'' neighbors; many have lost their architectural literacy after decades in faceless auto suburbs.
Still, Turley's Harbor Town, 130 acres of densely packed turn-of-the-century-style houses with porches and what he calls ``Southern waterfront imagery,'' is a commercial success and has created a strong new community on an island site in the Mississippi River, adjacent to downtown Memphis.
Efforts to give citizens a say, providing alternatives to dulling and wasteful sprawl development, are spreading. Take ``Futurescape 96,'' being mounted this spring by the planning commission in Chattanooga/Hamilton County, Tenn. With help from the Lyndhurst Foundation, the commission is using a visual preference survey devised by urban designer Anton Nelessen.
Citizens countywide are being shown slides of single-family housing, apartments, stores, signs, streets and public places in their region. They're asked to grade each view on a minus-10 to plus-10 scale, picking urban forms they prefer and believe fit Chattanooga best.
For example, they might be shown a grocery store - first standing alone, then in a strip mall, then with other buildings around it, finally with second-story apartments and landscaping along the street.
Chattanooga Area Chamber of Commerce President James Vaughan is enthusiastic about the survey: ``It will be used as the basis for changing building codes and local planning ordinances so that we get the kind of community we want.''
Chattanoogans will have multiple chances to register their preferences, including 21 community meetings between now and May 30, frequent cable and public TV showings and easy video rentals of the taped choices with answer sheets to fill out and send in.
For many of us, the pendulum of American taste and preference is swinging back to tradition. Take the Disney Corp.'s Celebration, Fla. - a new city being constructed beside the strip-mall jungle around the Magic Kingdom, designed to grow from zero to some 20,000 people over the next decade or two.
The Disney crew sampled extensively to find what people wanted. The answer: a sociable town center with people living above the shops, streets designed for strolling, compact village form, paths and trails, ``timeless'' architecture. Celebration houses and apartments have proven so popular Disney's been obliged to hold a raffle to see who gets in.
In some areas, NIMBY (``not-in-my-back yard'') opposition from uninformed neighboring communities, or misguided folks who still believe density is a four-letter word, may block the new experiments.
But democratize development, give people visual choices including quality, compact development, and the popsicle's likely to win.
Neal R. Peirce is a columnist for The Washington Post.
Washington Post Writers Group
LENGTH: Medium: 99 lines ILLUSTRATION: GRAPHIC: RICHARD MILHOLLAND/Los Angeles Timesby CNB