New Visions for Suburbia: Reassessing Aesthetics and Place-making in Modernism, Imageability and New Urbanism

Abstract

This paper explores three controversial and large-scale attempts by architects to build more attractive suburban areas: Cumbernauld in Scotland (key designs constructed in the 1950s and 1960s), Irvine in California (key designs from the 1960s and 1970s onward), and Poundbury in England (key designs created in the 1980s and built from the 1990s on). They represent major approaches to the issue of aesthetics and place—modernism, humanistic imageability and legibility, and new urbanism or the Urban Villages Movement. The paper distinguishes between several terms relevant in assessing visual character: objective aesthetics, style, place and satisfaction. It is argued that all three developments conform to some principles of the visual and psychological aspects of good design; but these principles differ, resulting in criticisms from those promoting different styles.

Notes

1. The authors wish to thank an anonymous reviewer for helping to refine this summary of the argument. Thanks are also due to Davis Solomon for excellent comments on the whole paper and the Graham Foundation that funded part of the research.

2. Approximately 40 people were interviewed in Irvine, eight in Cumbernauld and 1 in Poundbury. This reflects work for other related papers. Given the focus on underlying philosophy in this paper, with many documentary sources, the interviews really supplemented the main sources for the paper. In each case documents came from local governments, local archives, unpublished reports, and published accounts. It was also fortunate that in each case surveys by others had assessed resident satisfaction—these are cited in the main text.

3. Some general definitions reflect those of The Oxford English Dictionary (2008) and the Wordnet (2008) project.

4. Some exceptions, such as the work of Christopher Alexander influencing False Creek in Vancouver, are not suburban and so fall outside the scope of this paper.

5. This is also cited in (omitted for anonymity).