Coming Full Circle
I've noticed an odd phenomenon recently: the best books about architecture (in my opinion) are to be found in the sociology section of the bookstore. They aren't so much about buildings as they are about the structure of the community.
The major trends in Houston architecture in the last decade have not been at the scale of individual buildings, but on a more regional scale: planned communities, infrastructure, and the redevelopment of the inner city. In fact, I came across an interesting item in the Wall Street Journal within the past year: five out of the top 10 master-planned communities in the United States are in the Houston area. I think this represents a desire for planning and a desire for community, whether or not it is actually being satisfied by the commercially available products.
While Houston's master-planned communities still date from a vintage when twentieth century suburban models were beyond question, mainstream developers have by now begun to adopt new urbanist principles. The ultimate success of such communities will depend on how successfully they are able to accommodate the scale of the automobile with the desired human scale that lies at the heart of new urbanist models. More importantly, how well can it integrate with the current scale of business endeavor. Prevailing development models favor economies of scale: big box retail, large apartment complexes, large quantities of anything that work at cross purposes to the fine grained qualities we seek to recapture from traditional urban life.
We are faced with a seeming paradox: on one hand, planning must foster the small scale individualistic quirks that lend the richness and vitality to traditional city life, on the other hand, planning our built environment must expand in scope from the neighborhood level, beyond even the city-wide level, to become truly regional in scope.
At a minimum, the Houston region must approach planning as a unit of Harris County and the surrounding contiguous seven counties. Here we run headlong into the limitations of the current political framework. Decisions about where to route the new roads, or locate an expansion to port facilities must be addressed at this scale, but are still confined and addressed within obsolete and self-interested territorial boundaries.
Architects must become the architects of community. Dropping individual buildings within an increasingly incoherent urban framework can no longer suffice. We lament that we have abdicated community design to traffic engineers and landscape architects, but the truth is that we never had that control in the first place. In fact, the mechanism for such true regional planning does not really exist.
I pose this challenge to the profession as we move into the 21st century: we must re-invent ourselves as the master builders of society. We must begin by assuming leadership roles within our community and recognize that architecture is first and foremost a service to people, and that it is the citizens of the community that are our ultimate clients.
Thus, we come full circle. Urbanism returns to its roots as a concentrator and facilitator of human interaction. Architecture abandons formal abstraction to serve human needs and foster civic pride. And I end the year where I began: with an appeal to our innate humanism as social beings, and as the obvious leaders in the challenge to rebuild our community.
James Hill, AIA
