Don’t Go Vertical. Go Programmatic.

This is a contribution by Nan Ellin, PhD to the website Zocalo Public Square: http://zocalopublicsquare.org/thepublicsquare/2012/04/30/how-dense-can-you-be/read/up-for-discussion/

It is not necessary for cities to “go vertical,” particularly in places where views of the natural landscape and outdoor lifestyles are strongly valued. While sprawl is detrimental to quality of life and to the environment, density comes in several flavors: building, population, and programmatic.

Mistakenly, in the quest for urban and ecological vitality, many planners work toward achieving building and population density, when it is actually programmatic density—the adjacency of uses—that is most critical. As Jane Jacobs observed in 1961, cities need “a most intricate and close-grained diversity of uses that give each other constant mutual support, both economically and socially.” Programmatic density—sometimes described as “cross-programming” or “programmatic integration”—can be accomplished through deliberate interventions by designers, planners, and developers. Or it may occur more spontaneously and serendipitously through the creativity of small business initiatives and residents.

Some contemporary integrations recall pre-industrial ones, such as housing above the store and live/work spaces. Others are pre-industrial with a twist, such as housing above the big-box store (e.g. Walmart, Best Buy), time-share condominiums, the movie theatre/restaurant, bookstore/coffeehouse, the urban plaza or parking lot by day/outdoor movie theatre at night, and advertising integrated with buildings through murals, billboards, and animated screens. Others still are completely of the moment. Such emergent examples of cross-programming include the office with basketball court and daycare center, the intergenerational community building (combining day care, teenage community center, continuing education, and seniors center), the public school/community center, the integrated parking structure (parking blended into buildings, retail centers, and parks), the cybercafé (sometimes combined with computer retail as well), the laundromat/music club, and the Dive-In (watching movies while floating on rafts).

This low-density urbanism translates into reduced commuting, greater convenience, increase in quality public space, more social interaction, greater social capital (trust), and preservation of the natural environment. In the quest to improve our places, we may take cues from the pre-elevator, pre-automobile, pre-telephone city, improving upon it all the while with 21st-century construction, transportation, and communication technologies.

Nan Ellin, PhD, is Professor and Chair of the Department of City and Metropolitan Planning at the University of Utah. This is adapted from her forthcoming book Good Urbanism (Island Press 2012, islandpress.org).