Living in a city’s cultural center and nightlife hub has always been a way of life for German language professor Romey Sabalius, 33, and his Japanese wife, Atscaux, 32.
“You don’t ask Europeans, `Why are you living downtown?’ You ask them, `Why do you want to be away from the center of activity?’ The same goes for my wife in Japan,” he says.
So when they moved from Utah to his new job as director of San Jose State University’s German language program, a home at Paseo Plaza, across from the university, was a natural.
Constructed New York-style with brownstone-like townhomes, stoops and narrow sidewalks, the new housing development is within walking distance of civic services and social activity.
“First, I can’t beat the commute. You can’t buy time. We also thrive in big cities. We love the ethnic diversity downtown. In the suburbs you live in a sort of mono-culture. This is something very European,” he said.
The Sabaliuses don’t consider themselves pioneers, but they are residents of a relatively new type of community planning called New Urbanism that is gaining a foothold both in inner cities and the suburbs.
Santa Clara County, Calif., drawing on its own historic neighborhoods such as San Jose’s Willow Glen, is leading the way. More intimate streetscapes, mixed-housing set nearer to sidewalks, pedestrian walkways and verdant center squares or parks, all within walking distance of retail outlets, civic services, cultural centers and mass transit, are elements that hark back to an era of close-knit communities and more traditionally planned towns.
“It’s very simple. It’s a diversity of use and of households and `walkable’ neighborhoods,” said Berkeley, Calif., architect Peter Calthorpe, one of the West’s New Urbanism gurus.
“It’s hard to have a human scale community without a walking environment. Walking means safer activity through surveillance. Kids have more autonomy. Otherwise kids have life-by-appointment and have to be driven everywhere.”
These new neighborhoods aren’t hot properties simply because they are good for America’s soul. Neo-traditionalists say the outdated alternative for new housing, suburban sprawl–impersonal canyons of garage doors and cookie-cutter homes marching off into the horizon–places a greater demand on infrastructure and city services.
The new neighborhoods also address greenbelt preservation concerns and the growing shortage of land upon which to build.
“There are a whole range of reasons. The aging don’t want to be warehoused in retirement communities. On the most basic level it leads you to more beautiful neighborhoods, destinations close at hand, where people get to know each other,” Calthorpe said.
Urban planners, developers and architects like Calthorpe are designing two basic types of neo-traditional neighborhoods. In existing city cores they build smaller in-fill communities like Paseo Plaza, developed by Culver City, Calif.-based Goldrich and Kest in downtown San Jose, and larger new home developments like Summerhill Home’s Rose Garden. Both communities benefit from the neo-traditionalist elements existing in the thriving neighborhoods.
That’s less the case with larger village-like developments built from scratch and placed farther out, often along the city’s edge.
The first residents of the Evergreen Hills community, within the greater Evergreen Specific Plan, must drive to retail stores because the commercial center hasn’t come yet. Calthorpe’s The Crossings in Mountain View, Calif., former site of the Old Mill Shopping Center, still awaits a commuter train stop.
“Hopefully, we’ll get that in soon. I hate driving in traffic,” said Howie Meyerson, who, along with his wife, moved from San Jose’s Willow Glen to The Crossings before all the development’s single-family homes sold out. Townhomes and row homes remain to be completed and sold.
“I do a lot of errands on foot and there are convenience factors. Safeway, fitness center, the Milk Pail, a small specialty grocery store,” Meyerson said. “People do tend to be out front more. The small back yards aren’t much of a place to hide. Because of the streets, you don’t have a lot of fast driving. I’ve gotten to know my neighbors better here.”
For all its Old World charm, however, the New Urbanism is not a panacea.
Studies from the Santa Clara County Manufacturing Group show that people want housing in existing neighborhoods near transit lines, but other studies from the city of San Jose and the National Association of Home Builders show people have strong attachments to privacy (read: large lots in suburbia), lots of storage space and cars, cars and more cars.
“About 30 percent of people in single-family detached small lots use their garage for storage. Then where do you put your car, especially if we are talking about narrower streets and smaller setbacks?” asked Gary Schoennauer, San Jose’s director of planning.
“There is less and less room to park cars, yet auto ownership usage is still about two per family,” he said. “You can’t realistically eliminate the car, nor do we think we ever will.”
According to the NAHB’s 1996 survey, “What Today’s Home Buyers Want,” many want three-car garages, a difficult concept for the smaller spaces of neo-traditionalism.
San Francisco architect Jeff Zimmerman, who designed the Lightner Property Group’s Ironwood vest pocket community in San Mateo, Calif., says some developers are fooling the public with faux neo-traditionalism projects that employ only a few visual elements while still claiming to be disciples of New Urbanism.
“What happens with trends is they start getting ripped off. You get a porch and you think you have neo-traditional. You need civic and cultural experience within a walking distances. You can’t get that in a Home Depot,” Zimmerman said.
Other kinds of perceptions can also cloud the future of the New Urbanism movement.
Gerald and Jacqueline Pighini moved to a Paseo Plaza townhouse from Los Altos, Calif., after their children left home.
“I was tired of having a lawn to take care of and my wife and I were always downtown. San Jose Symphony, opera, Cleveland Ballet. We wanted to live downtown, but there was no way to do that until Paseo Plaza was built,” said 62-year-old Gerald Pighini.
“Out on Fourth Street, the (new townhome) steps look like stoops where they used to play stoop ball. Those are new townhouses that have not been selling well,” he said. “There is a security perception. It’s much safer down here than the perception.”
