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PROVOCATIONS
May 2004

"Good Old Urbanism - part 4 - Sarasota, FL - Building the Future"

by Susan Bilenker

Continuing our exploration of examples of successful "old urbanism," existing communities that already manifest many of the principles of the New Urbanism.

[In the previous issue, we profiled Sarasota, a lush and quirky small city on Florida's Gulf Coast that's trying to use principles of New Urbanism to weave its various charming "old urbanism" districts into a cohesive live-work-culture-nature experience.]

Renowned urban planner Andres Duany, who authored Sarasota's new downtown master plan, recently returned to check on its progress, and was quoted as saying that the current vogue for Mediterranean Revival ("Med-Rev") is a mistake, preferring that new buildings be designed in the style of the Sarasota School of Architecture.

This writer was flummoxed by the suggestion, since what makes Sarasota such a unique joy to drive, bike, and walk around is its delicious lush potpourri of exuberant greenery and fanciful eclectic human-scaled architecture. It's a visually fun and sensuous environment, full of color and fragrance, gentle breezes, and graceful bridges crossing waterways galore. It's also a city with a sense of humor, as befits the home of the circus (think Ringling, among others).

The hard modernism of the Sarasota School structures and their lesser imitators make for some of the least appealing, coldest buildings on the skyline and along the sidewalks. A few here and there, sure, for historical flavor, but a new crop? Didn't we learn anything from the mistakes of the '60s?

Thankfully, in the April 28-May 4, 2004, issue of The Sarasota Weekly, editor Bob Frederickson weighed in with a well-crafted overview of the downtown style question. He graciously allowed us to reprint his essay here. I couldn't have said it better myself.

Sarasota's Downtown Plan: New Urbanism or New Urban Legend?

By Bob Frederickson, The Sarasota Weekly

   The community of Seaside on the Florida panhandle was designed as a throwback to a simpler time . . .a time when folks would sit on their front porches after dinner and greet neighbors strolling past on sidewalks lined with white-picket fences . . . a time when people worked, shopped, learned and played all within easy walking distance of their homes.

   The project was an instant hit. News shows and magazines were beside themselves with praise for the ideals that inspired it. The designers were hailed as visionaries of a "new urbanism" that would forever revolutionize the way we lived, perhaps even turning the tide on the suburban sprawl that had come to dominate the development landscape of the post-war years
.
   So what happened? The ideals of the movement are still highly praised, but the reality remains: the lion's share of new development still follows a decidedly un-village-like path. Since its completion in the early eighties, Seaside has become more a curiosity than a real town. Most of the homes there were purchased by absentee owners who prefer renting them out to actually living in them.

So the irony is that while a steady stream of tenants pass through to partake in the dream of small-town life for a day, a week or a month, very few people actually  "live" there. That irony was reinforced by the use of Seaside as the location for Hollywood's 1998 movie "The Truman Show" starring Jim Carey as an insurance salesman who discovers his entire life is actually a television show. Unitentionally perhaps, the town becomes the perfect set for a film dealing with the conflict between reality and perception.

   One of Seaside's primary architects, Andres Duany, was hired by Sarasota a few years back to help formulate the city's downtown master plan. That plan is still a work in progress it would seem, as the ideals of Duany's vision clash with the brick and mortar realities of current development projects. That clash was apparent recently when Duany commented in a Herald Tribune story by Lisa Rab that "right now, Sarasota is getting very bad architecture. They should demand a code that establishes quality."  But I suspect that what Duany and some of the City's planners are really after is a Seaside-like degree of building conformity.

   The original code proposed by Duany recommended that Mediterranean style architecture be adopted by the city because that was the public preference at the time. But at a city commission meeting two weeks ago he said the code should embrace modern architecture given the city's historical context as the birthplace of the modernist movement known as the Sarasota School of Architecture. The change of heart is revealing however. It shows an understanding of how the changing face of architecture reflects underlying changes in the community at large. And it belies the notion that any one style should hold sway over all others.

    A walk through Duany's Seaside might be full of nostalgic charm. But it lacks a fuller context beyond. In Sarasota youıll find everything from small tin-roofed "cracker" cottages that hearken back to the cityıs pioneer days to the gradiose Moorish overtones of the county administration complex downtown. You have the modernism of the Sarasota School as embodied in the City Hall building and  the old-world Venetian elegance of the Ringling estate. And you have just about everything in between. Each style gives a fascinating glimpse into the life and times of those who came before.

   But in Seaside? Well, the context is all on the surface. There was a reason for front porches back in the days before air-conditioning: the sweltering heat and humidity indoors. There was a need for homes to be near schools, shopping and workplaces because many lacked access to transportation.

   Many wage earners worked for the same company their entire life; many families lived in the same home for generations. But those are not the realities of life today. And no architect or city planner can make it otherwise simply by adopting a new architectural code or by building a project that tries to recreate the small-town life of a Frank Capra movie.

   Maybe that approach can work in Seaside. But it's a long way from there to Sarasota...every bit as far as the leap from the imagined to the real.

 

[reprinted with permission from The Sarasota Weekly, Sarasota FL)

 

(Next issue: The International Making Cities Livable Conference comes to Sarasota.)

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Susan Bilenker is Publisher of DesignSite. She spent many years involved with various aspects of architectural practice and most enjoys a daily life that maximizes walking and minimizes driving.

More about Sarasota . . .

Amy A. Elder, Sarasota, 2003

Patricia Ringling Buck, et al, A History of Visual Art in Sarasota, 2003

Bonnie Wilpon, Bonnie Wildon, Sarasota-Bradenton, FL, 1999

Editors of Twin Lights, Sarasota, Florida: A Photographic Portrait, 2000

Chelle Koster Walton, Karen T. Bartlett (photographer), The Sarasota, Sanibel Island and Naples Book: A Complete Guide, 2001

John Howey, The Sarasota School of Architecture 1941-1966

Steve Rabow, Steve Rabow's Guide: Sarasota, Bradenton and Venice, 2000

Michael Brown, Streetwise Sarasota

Kevin C. Myers (preface), Buy It, Fix It, Sell It: Profit, 2003 (not specifically about Sarasota, but it's a thought . . .)

William Bronchick, Robert Dahlstrom, Flipping Properties: Generate Instant Cash Profits in Real Estate, 2001 (not specifically about Sarasota, but it comes to mind here . . .)

PROVOCATIONS is an online journal of architecture and ideas.

Editor: Susan Bilenker, info@design-site.net.
Publisher: Susan Bilenker Communications for DesignSite™ .
Opinions expressed by authors published in Provocations are those of the authors and not necessarily those of Provocations, DesignSite, or Susan Bilenker Communications.

last update: 5/4/04