I grew up in suburbia in a split level house on a quiet street in a small university town called Newark in the state of Delaware. Our development was built in the 1950's on reclaimed swamp land. We lived next to a cement lined ditch which helped drain the area and make our property build-able. (I suppose this is one of the reasons I have some degree of comfort living here in Port Charlotte which is also built on drained swampland.)

The location of our home was close enough to my elementary school that I was able to walk or ride my bike. The shopping center was also walk-able but more easily bike-able as was Main Street, the primary business district in those days. Not only was my elementary school close, I was also able to ride my bike to middle school and high school and the University of Delaware which I attended for two years. In those days, my need for transportation was greatly reduced because I could get to my after school activities and my friend's houses in the neighborhood using my legs. Behind our home was a large stretch of green space partially for flood control and partly for recreational use. I grew up in what today I'd call a livable community.

Then I moved to Silicon Valley, California. Nothing was accessible without a car. I remember arriving in Palo Alto with only a suitcase, backpack and no wheels. I struggled to look for work on public transportation that that took hours to cover vast distances with many stops. This was one of the reasons I bought a moped to help me get around while I looked for work. And look where that got me!

The contrast was quite striking to me then and remains so still as I reflect on how the design of the community in Newark, was so friendly and livable and how unpleasant I found living in sprawling Silicon Valley. Newark was a town laid out before the invention of the automobile. Silicon Valley and many of today's suburbs were designed first and foremost for the automobile.

My interest in discussing the spiritually uplifting dimensions of how communities are designed came from several discussions with former Charlotte County Commissioner and member of our Fellowship Sue Dudley and hearing this topic mentioned in President Clinton's state of the union message. Here is what he said:

All our communities face a preservation challenge, as they grow and green space shrinks. Seven thousand acres of farmland and open space are lost every day. In response, I propose two major initiatives: First, a $1-billion Livability Agenda to help communities save open space, ease traffic congestion, and grow in ways that enhance every citizen's quality of life. And second, a $1-billion Lands Legacy Initiative to preserve places of natural beauty all across America -- from the most remote wilderness to the nearest city park.

I think so and thankfully more and more people think so too. This morning I'd like to share some of what's going on to make our communities more livable places which I find spiritually uplifting. I hope you will too.

Let's start with something pretty basic. The width of a street. The streets in Newark were wide enough for cars to park on both sides and almost have two pass. The road in front of the Silicon Valley apartment complex in which I lived had four lanes and a traffic island. Saying hello to a neighbor across the street required a bull horn.

The width of a street has a large effect on the speed of traffic and how people feel about being neighborly. This is particularly a problem in older neighborhoods in more densely populated areas. Often, traffic isn't local and the community becomes a public thoroughfare creating noise, pollution and danger to children. A number of communities have begun to narrow streets with the goal of making them more attractive not to cars but to people. Berkeley actually put barricades on some streets to reduce non local traffic for cars but allowed bicycles to pass through them.

Downtown areas have taken a beating with the flight to the suburbs and the growth of mega-discount stores like Kmart and Wal-Mart (which I discovered my spell checker knows how to spell). The goal of narrowing streets is to make them more walk-able and cross-able. Along with the planting of trees and the addition of benches, green space and sculpture, the narrowed street draws people out of their automobiles and onto their feet.

Unfortunately, changing the size of a street can't reverse all the other design decisions made with cars as the first priority. So to explore other ways to make a community more livable, I'd like to introduce you to Robert S. Davis. Davis, 55, is not your typical developer. A graduate of Antioch College and during those years a member of the Socialist Worker's Party, he worked after graduation recruiting African Americans and the poor to attend the liberal school. He later worked with Miami developers active in a Federal Housing Authority program which he described as "subsidizing the very rich to provide housing for the poor[1]."

Dissatisfied with the modern resort development he saw all over Florida, he toured the Southeast looking for examples of already existing towns that were visually and socially appealing. He found surviving towns that had been designed before the automobile to be much more people friendly. Narrower streets brought houses and neighbors closer together. Front porches encouraged people to sit outside in the evening and interact with their neighbors and people walking by. The most appealing feature of these more traditional towns was they were walk-able. And when one is walking, one is much more likely to make casual contact with one's neighbors. It is this casual sociability that is the foundation for building a closer community.

Davis' grandfather died in 1979 and left him 80 acres of land on the gulf coast of Florida in Walton County. He decided to take this opportunity to put his ideas to the test and started a town called Seaside. Narrower streets and front porches were part of the building code for the community. Each sidewalk was separated from the porch, sixteen feet away, by a picket fence to give some privacy but not interfere with passersby striking up a conversation with a porch sitter. The roads are paved with bricks which encourage people to drive more slowly as the bricks rumble under the wheels.

Strict building codes encourage design that makes each home unique and able to blend architecturally with the others in the neighborhood. Garages are hidden in detached buildings behind homes rather than next to them. Alleyway paths allow people to walk in green space rather than along the street. The design of the streets has been so successful that these paths have turned out to be neglected. One of the favorite pastimes in Seaside is strolling the streets and enjoying the architectural creativity.

The grid-like traditional street plan differs from suburban curves with short straight streets that have pleasant visual termination. The attention to street design creates what co-designer Andres Duany calls "public room" between buildings.

The sense that the street forms an agreeable outdoor room is an integral part of the appeal of great cities like Paris and London and of many sought-after urban neighborhoods. In the Georgetown section of Washington, D.C., Duany told me, "people will pay four to five hundred thousand dollars for a house with small rooms, bad plumbing, and parking two blocks away; it has to do with the beautiful street in front of it.[2]"

Davis and others are not alone in their attempts to build more people friendly communities. All over Florida we see another design being built - the gated community. Rather than create public space, the gated community defends itself against the public creating a private enclave. These enclaves are a place for living and recreation, separated from commerce, work and the public sphere. Gated communities wall off the public by eliminating through streets. The homes are usually arranged for maximum privacy and discourage casual connections by all but those walking the dog. The place people meet is the community center or club house which is usually reached by driving and not walking since there are no sidewalks. While these gated communities do provide more community than most suburban developments, they are exclusive compounds for members only.

We see this contrast in community design here in Charlotte County. We see the range from suburban layout such as where Philomena and I live off Peachland, to the gated communities in which some of us here live, to the old Florida traditional design found in downtown Punta Gorda. Of all these different places, the most visually appealing and people friendly part of Charlotte County I think is found right near Gilchrist Park. Where the friendly, community spirit of this neighborhood becomes the most apparent is during Halloween when people from all over the county bring their children to trick or treat filling the sidewalks with ghosts, princesses and fairy goblins.

Judith Corbett writes:

Cities everywhere are facing similar problems - increasing traffic congestion and worsening air pollution, the continuing loss of open space, the need for costly improvements to road and public services, the inequitable distribution of economic resources, and the loss of a sense of community. The problems seem overwhelming and we suffer from their consequences every day. City character is blurred until every place becomes like every other place and all adding up to No Place[3].

1. All planning should be in the form of complete and integrated communities containing housing, shops, work places, schools, parks and civic facilities essential to the daily life of the residents.
   
2. Community size should be designed so that housing, jobs, daily needs and other activities are within easy walking distance of each other.
   
3. As many activities as possible should be located within easy walking distance of transit stops.
   
4. A community should contain a diversity of housing types to enable citizens from a wide range of economic levels and age groups to live within its boundaries.
   
5. Businesses within the community should provide a range of job types for the community's residents.
   
6. The location and character of the community should be consistent with a larger transit network.
   
7. The community should have a center focus that combines commercial, civic, cultural and recreational uses.
   
8. The community should contain an ample supply of specialized open space in the form of squares, greens and parks whose frequent use is encouraged through placement and design.
   
9. Public spaces should be designed to encourage the attention and presence of people at all hours of the day and night.
   
10. Each community or cluster of communities should have a well-defined edge, such as agricultural greenbelts or wildlife corridors, permanently protected from development.
    
11. Streets, pedestrian paths and bike paths should contribute to a system of fully-connected, interesting routes to all destinations. Their design should encourage pedestrian and bicycle use by being small and spatially defined by buildings, trees and lighting; and by discouraging high speed traffic.
    
12. Wherever possible, the natural terrain, drainage and vegetation of the community should be preserved with superior examples contained within parks or greenbelts.
    
13. The community design should help conserve resources and minimize waste.
    
14. Communities should provide for the efficient use of water through the use of natural drainage, drought tolerant landscaping and recycling.
    
15. The street orientation, the placement of buildings and the use of shading should contribute to the energy efficiency of the community.
    

As we end this century there is a natural inclination to lean into the future. Charlotte County is still young in terms of development and many choices are before us which can make this community more or less livable. May we make the choices and encourage our elected officials to make the choices that will make this community even better than it is today. May we value and encourage civic planning here that brings people together rather than driving them apart, creating a climate that stimulates our personal and religious growth and satisfaction.

Copyright © 1999 by Rev. Samuel A. Trumbore. All rights reserved.

[1]Langdon, Phillip, "A Good Place to Live", The Atlantic Monthly; March 1988; Volume 261, No. 3; pages 39 - 60. Can be read on the Internet at http://www.AtlanticMonthly.com/ The article is extracted from his book A Better Place to Live (March 1988, University of Massachusetts Press). A paperback edition was published in 1995 by HarperCollins). The details about Davis and Seaside are extracted from this article.
[2] ibid
[3] http://www.lgc.org/clc/ahwnprin.html The Ahwanhee Principles: Toward a Livable Community