What is this blog about?

"Hello, my name is John. I'm a recovering architect."

I like all sorts of towns, cities and buildings, but what I design are Classical buildings and Traditional towns and cities. You can see some of them at www.massengale.com.

With Robert A.M. Stern I wrote a history of architecture and urbanism in the Progressive Era, New York 1900, Metropolitan Architecture and Urbanism 1890–1915 (Rizzoli, 1983) as well as an introduction to the history of suburbia before sprawl, The Anglo–American Suburb (St. Martin's Press, 1981). With Victor Dover, I am writing Street Design, The Art & Practice of Making Complete Streets (J. Wiley & Sons, 2013).

I'm a Board Member of the Congress for New Urbanism, the former Chair of CNU New York and a former Director of the Institute of Classical Art & Architecture and Federated Conservationists of Westchester County.

A co-founder of the New Urban and Traditional Architecture Councils.I was also a co-founder of the pro-urb list, a forum on the internet for an advanced discussion of New Urbanism. And in this blog you will find some postings from that list, along with other writings and clippings on architecture, urbanism, Classicism, Tradition, metaphysics and culture.


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Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Houston on Hudson Hallelujah, Hosannas on High (NOT)

FIRST we had Atlantic Yards. Now we have Hudson Yards. Do we really need further proof that the New York City Department of City Planning should live up to its name and plan the city's streets and blocks and then follow that up with a form-based code, instead of leaving the design of the city to developers and their architects?

Anti-urban, suburban-style office parks like the one below are not the reason people pay $2,000 a foot to live in Manhattan.

As usual, Curbed has all the info.

2007_11_tishman2

November 21, 2007 in Architecture, Current Affairs, New Urbanism, New York, Urbanism, Weblogs | Permalink

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Can you give an example of a form-based code?

Posted by: steve at Nov 21, 2007 7:52:51 AM

The link I gave has a description from the Form Based Codes Institute. For this site, a form-based code might start with requirements like making the streeet wall up to 12 stories, mandatory setbacks above that, exterior walls to be a minimum of 60% masonry or masonry cladding and windows to be vertical. Bob Stern's form-based code for Times Square specified lit billboards that covered X percent of the facade up to a certain height.

Posted by: john at Nov 21, 2007 7:59:40 AM