New Haven's New Face: The "Norton Street" Tour

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New Haven’s New Face: The “Norton Street” Tour

by Paul Bass | Jan 26, 2010 11:34 am

(22) Comments | Commenting has been closed | E-mail the Author

Posted to: Neighborhoods

Paul Bass Photo Jonathan Hopkins emerged from cyberspace to take a fresh look at his hometown. At one rebuilt school, he found a perfect fusion of old and new in an alternating pattern of bricks.

At some other spots around town, gravity pulled his thumbs down.

The New Haven of 2010 looks a lot different from the New Haven Hopkins grew up in. It’s even different from the New Haven he left in 2007 to begin attending Roger Williams University, where he majors in architecture.

Like other New Urbanists, Hopkins has a lot to say about the changes.

Readers of raging debates in Independent comments threads may be familiar with Hopkins’ passionate takes on the city he loves. He fires off provocative mini-dissertations on urban planning, development, street life, and race and class, usually under the name “Norton Street.” (He grew up on Norton Parkway and returns there on school vacations.)

New Haven is undergoing its most dramatic physical transformation in a half century. In the midst of a recession, New Haven is spawning new edifices practically by the week, from public schools to Yale buildings to downtown offices and apartments and a new cancer hospital.

The changes have prompted much debate in town. Two longtime civic observers, Anstress Farwell and Frances “Bitsie” Clark, took the Independent on tours of their favorite and least-favorite new buildings. (Read them here and here.)

Before heading back to Rhode Island for second semester of junior year, “Norton Street” Hopkins, sporting a buzz cut and goatee, hooded sweatshirt and baggy black jeans, agreed to serve as the guide for the latest opinionated thumbs-up, thumbs-down tour of the city’s fast-changing landscape. In person, his passion, buttressed by the certainty of the young and inquisitive, burned as intense as in his written comments. Come along and see.

Sheridan School: Thumbs Up

Hopkins started his tour at the Mauro-Sheridan Science, Technology and Communications Interdistrict Magnet School on Fountain Street. (Most people know it simply as “Sheridan.”) The city recently completed a $47.5 million makeover there. It kept the sturdy 1922 main building and demolished and replaced the later addition.

In Hopkins’ view, this was a perfect example of how to make a new design fit into its surroundings, yet add new touches. “You can tell where the new addition was put on,” he noted—but only when you stand close and pay attention. Look closely, and you see an alternating white-and-brick face and new architectural details. If you drive by, you see a brick wing that matches the old wing, same height, and the same height as other nearby two- and three-story homes. “It looks like one school” again.

The school has expanded to K-8, with 300 students. It needed a bigger new entryway. It’s set back from the sidewalk by a U-shaped courtyard and framed by a gate with wide-open arches. Hopkins applauded all those decisions. Other apartment complexes nearby have U-shaped courtyards, too. And the gateway strikes just the right “semi-private” note: It lets you know that people with school business only should walk in. But it doesn’t fence people out; this is, after all, a “public” school.

Hopkins confessed to a bias: He’s known the design’s architect, Ken Boroson, since 4th grade. Boroson visited Hopkins’ class at West Hills School and assigned them to design a house; Hopkins got the architecture bug. Boroson also coached Hopkins’ little league baseball team.

But Hopkins’ fondness for the new Sheridan nevertheless derives from deeply held ideas about architecture. As Hopkins continued on his tour, themes emerged: the new should fit in with the old, sidewalks should yield to “transitional spaces,” scale matters, and people are preferable to cars. That’s why he likes certain new buildings in town—and why others, like the new John C. Daniels School on Congress Avenue, put him in a funk.

Daniels School: Thumbs Down

Hopkins’ verdict on the $44 million pre-K-8 palace: “an ugly box they stuck a mural on.”

Hopkins was predisposed against the new school since before it was built. His family attends Resurrection Lutheran Church on Davenport, directly behind the mammoth school lot. The church was at the forefront of an ultimately losing battle to save hundreds of homes from the wrecking ball to make way for the school.

The finished product—“the most horrendous thing to happen to New Haven since the” destruction of the Oak Street neighborhood during mid-20th- century urban renewal—renewed Hopkins’ dislike for the project.

For starters, it’s horizontal. It stretches all the way down a long city block of Congress Avenue. “No other [nearby] building is wider than 40 feet,” he noted. They’re all “broken up vertically.”

“The scale of this thing is way out of proportion with the rest of the neighborhood,” he argued.

Then there’s all the “uninviting” metal. The set-back windows. The gate blocking off space for people to sit outside. No grass patches along the sidewalk.

“I don’t understand what’s happening with this roof,” Hopkins said, pointing north along Congress from the school entrance. “It looks like a skateboard flipping up at the end. It likes like it could go flapping away in the wind.” A school, he argued, should give a “sense of permanence,” as at Sheridan.

What about the planters out front? “I don’t know why they’re here,” just randomly plopped down.

Even the colorful mural-clock atop the entrance fails to impress him. It feels slapped on to an imposing, dull building, he said. And its function is confusing: “It’s either a globe or a clock.”

The parking lot across Baldwin Street unnerves Hopkins, too. A block of houses was demolished for the lot. Exposed now are the unattractive backs of houses on the following block, giving people a negative impression of a neighborhood filled with what are—from the front—nicely designed old homes.

He was asked where room should be made for teachers to park.

“Why are the people teaching here driving here?” he responded. “Why aren’t they buying houses in the neighborhood? It takes 20 middle-class people to change a street.”

Q Terrace: Thumbs Up

Hopkins’ mood brightened at the next stop: the new Quinnipiac Terrace public-housing complex along the banks of Fair Haven’s Q River.

The sun helped. It lit a scene out of New Urbanist heaven along Peck Street: colorful two-story wood-frame homes—similar, but distinctive—winding along a grass-bordered sidewalk, past trees and attractive street lamps down to the river. All visible, all inviting.

Like Dixwell’s Monterey Homes, the new Q Terrace is a showpiece of the federal “Hope VI” approach to rebuilding housing projects.

As at Sheridan, Hopkins noted the “semi-private” “transitional” spaces: porches and grass strips between the sidewalk and front doors. Open to people but also clearly marked as an entrance to a private realm.

Then there are the connections to community and the surrounding environment—not just sidewalks to the river to the east, but the pathway to the rebuilt Clinton Avenue School (another Boroson gem) one block west, continuing past playing fields to Clinton Avenue.

Strolling the new streets that tie together the once-forbidding, rundown complex, Hopkins stopped to admire the “grand” community center that greets passersby on Front Street. Now if some retail stores could just replace the open lot on the complex’s southern flank (with the parking moved to the interior), Hopkins said, it would be perfect.

Winchester Avenue Garage: Thumbs Down

Cars are the downfall of the reviving business corridor along Winchester Avenue, in Hopkins’ view.

But even he had to admit the new garage at Winchester and Henry has some quite nice touches.

It has an attractive brick design. It has ground level storefronts with awnings and glass, fronted stone patios and a wide sidewalk. Even the partial concrete facing doesn’t bother him.

“It’s one of the nicest parking garages I’ve ever seen,” Hopkins confessed.

“But you can’t design a nice-looking parking garage. They tried the best they could. But it’s never been done.”

Look one flight up, he said, pointing to the parking decks. “There’s nothing happening up there. There’s no human activity. It’s just metal and concrete. No windows from apartments, with people opening to see what’s on the street. There’s no one on the street.”

The discussion resumed where it left off at Daniels School. Where should people park? Hopkins argued they shouldn’t—they should buy homes or rent nearby. “If people don’t want to live here, they shouldn’t work here. There are plenty of vacant lots to build your dream house on,” he responded.

What if they don’t want to? What if they feel unsafe in the neighborhood?

“There’s a reality of crime in this neighborhood. But that’s because there isn’t a defining middle class. It encourages the middle class not to invest in the neighborhood by building a big parking garage for them,” he argued—and the garage continues the cycle of unsafe, unpopulated streets.

Hopkins took another look at the awnings by the storefronts. “These awnings are a joke,” he concluded. “If they’re going to be this narrow, they have to be lower.” This high up, he predicted, they’ll never keep out rain or wind.

Walgreens Plaza: Thumbs Down

Over on Whalley Avenue, Hopkins asked why he didn’t see more parked cars.

He planted his feet on the asphalt connecting Walgreens and the soon-to-come Sherwin-Williams paint store near the corner of Ella Grasso Boulevard.

He did see some cars. But he said he rarely sees the lot full of cars. It’s one more spot in New Haven designed for parking rather than people, he said—and for more cars than will ever be needed. (He blamed zoning for requiring too many parking spaces per business on Whalley.)

Of course, Hopkins didn’t want to see a parking lot fronting Whalley, period. He had already Googled the hardware chain to get a sense of the largely windowless, plain bland “cinderblock box” coming to the spot. A complement to the Walgreen’s box.

“There’s this bubble created by zoning,” he argued. “It encourages single-use, single-story box stores that have parking lots that are too large, take up too much space” and “sap the life” out of main streets.

That kind of zoning creates a suburban-strip Boston Post Road feel at a busy corner that should welcome urban pedestrians, Hopkins said.

He credited the newer Walgreens for being less “ugly” than the one it replaced. “But it’s still ugly and not done well,” he continued: The entrance faces the parking mid-block instead of the corner of Ellsworth Avenue, where it could greet pedestrians. Exhaust pipes and mechanical boxes don’t belong at busy city corners, he argued. And the parking belongs in the back.

What particularly galled Hopkins was the name for the lot: Walgreens “Plaza.”

“This is really an embarrassment to plazas around the world,” he said. “If we took people from Paris or Italy and told them this is a ‘plaza,’ they would think we’re crazy. Plazas are where people congregate. They feel safe. People are drawn to them. These are asphalt lagoons.”

Fairlawn Manor: Thumbs Up

It took just a push of a walk button to bring Hopkins to a brighter world, catty corner across Boulevard and Whalley.

There beckoned Fairlawn Manor, a cluster of 12 spiffily remade century-plus two- and three-family homes.

Their waist-high picket fences said, “Come stop by and look at the flowers.” Their bay windows and upstairs porches whispered, “Come laze here on a Sunday afternoon.” The eaves extending above the third-story windows called, “There’s something up here to see, too.”

“We can discover new things every time we look at it,” Hopkins marveled. “We can look at the Dunkin’ Donuts across the street and understand everything about it in five seconds.”

This group of homes boxed in by Boulevard, Blake and Boulevard came close to meeting a stereotypically tragic New Haven end. They were almost bulldozed. A New York developer named Mitchell Maidman bought them in the 1980s. He refused to fix them up unless the city gave him permission to build a huge housing tower at what’s now the Walgreens Plaza. When the city refused, he let the houses rot.

A few years ago the new Haven’s leading not-for-profit restoration outfit, Neighborhood Housing Services (NHS), rescued the 12 homes, one step ahead of the wrecking ball. NHS did its trademark loving gut-rehabs.

Hopkins admired the well-painted homes’ subtle browns and beiges, the “permanent” and “solid” feel of the renovations, that “defined” “quasi-public realm” between the sidewalk and the front doors.

“If it was up to me,” he said, NHS “would have an infinite budget. Everything they touch turns to gold.”

That’s one reason that even the most critical architectural eye can find plenty to love in the new New Haven.

Comments

posted by: Steve Ross, Human on January 26, 2010 12:08pm

Holy reveal!

posted by: William Kurtz on January 26, 2010 12:13pm

Wow, the NHI has finally unmasked the mysterious Norton Street. Very interesting and thoughtful observations; I’m sure he has a productive career ahead of him as an architect. Now let’s see if you can figure out the secret identity of that “bat-man.”

posted by: Anon on January 26, 2010 12:43pm

Great article. Jonathan is 100% spot on.

posted by: Ali on January 26, 2010 12:55pm

Holy reveal is right! I rather liked just imagining who Norton Street is…oh well.

I have to say I admire his passion and interest in New Haven. I even have to say that he does have some good points. I do hope, however, that the school he attends exposes him to a bit more than New Urbanism and traditionalist architecture. One may not like modernism but it is a worthwhile endeavor if for nothing other than to broaden one’s horizons. If nothing else, take a drive down to see Philip Johnson’s Glass House - see why not everything should be beige with a picket fence!

I do feel bad for Jonathan as a rude shock awaits him should he graduate and go on to practice. It is something called the real world where people drive cars, need parking garages, and urban planning is more than a plan with all the blocks neatly filled in, and not everywhere needs a mixed-use development. When it comes to aesthetics, don’t forget about value engineering where your nice stone veneer building is reduced to a concrete block with texture because the project ran out of money.

I wish you well Mr. Norton/Hopkins - enjoy your studies, keep your passion alive and we’ll be waiting for you return to New Haven to conquer the City (you ARE coming back after school, right?)

posted by: Bill on January 26, 2010 1:15pm

It doesn’t surprise me that Norton Street is a young man based on his naive ideas.

posted by: streever on January 26, 2010 1:31pm

Woo-hoo!

I have to say, I kind of imagined Mr Street as looking like Mr Hopkins.

I really enjoyed seeing productive comments by him! and seeing him use his own name. I appreciate that he often disagrees with others, but I hope that now he’s using his own name & identity, he’ll continue with this more positive trend, and use a less dismissive tone when disagreeing with others.

Nice work NHI.

posted by: Nan Bartow on January 26, 2010 1:35pm

I’m looking forward to Jonathan’s ideas on how to improve “Middle Whalley” between Sherman and Ella Grasso Blvd or Whalley between Broadway and Pendleton St. Those sections need some serious help.

posted by: Mike on January 26, 2010 1:53pm

Great article!

posted by: HewNaven?? on January 26, 2010 2:58pm

Great Job, Jonathan. (I feel weird calling you Norton Street now).

I’m going to second Nan Bartow and say Whalley Avenue from Dwight St. to the Boulevard is in serious need of improvement. It’s a potential gold mine for small business and healthy community, and for many it’s the greeting to New Haven as you enter the city from points west. It should be a little more welcoming, and for the people who already live there a little more like home is supposed to be: comfortable and clean.

posted by: anon on January 26, 2010 3:09pm

The city needs better design guidelines and zoning to protect streetscapes and historic resources like the ones Jonathan talks about.

It would be great for our city if citizens rallied at a grassroots level to promote this.

Funding should also be made available for this work at a state level. Healthy cities are the most important factor influencing Connecticut’s long term prosperity—the state’s relative lack of attention to improving them, despite all the chit chat about “responsible growth”, shows how shortsighted our legislators and Governor have been.

posted by: Jonathan Hopkins on January 26, 2010 4:26pm

Ali,
My school has a Bauhaus-style curriculum, that has only recently began moving towards the more progressive “post-modern” movement in architecture and city planning.
I feel that modernism was born out of a time period characterized by enormous wealth, prosperity, a need for suburban development, advancements in building materials and many other things that are quickly becoming conditions of the past. We are now leaving a period of great wealth and entering a time of rapid oil depletion caused by economic competitiveness from Europe, China, India and Japan. The language of modern architecture-huge proportions and scale, long spans of glass and steel, single use buildings, automobile oriented, etc-makes little sense with our current national conditions. There was a time where expensive experiments were justifiable, but we are past that. The ‘post-modern’ movement seems to embrace transit oriented development, mixed use, small building lots and regular blocks, among many other changes that are derived from the housing crisis, an unmanageable rise in the cost of living and the perceived threat of climate change.
New Urbanism, on the other hand, draws its inspiration from the architecture and city planning principles of pre-World War 2, which had conditions very similar to the ones we are now beginning to face. While ‘post-modernism’ still embraces many design principles of modernism, New Urbanism is designed around a more modest scale, more earthly and pleasant building materials and classic principles.
I see New Urbanism as a device we can use to change our suburbanist country back into an urbanist one. Once we are an urban society, then we won’t need to do ‘new’ urbanism, we can just do good urbanism.
Having said that, I would argue that Quinnipiac Terrace is not a true New Urbanist development. The architecture of the buildings follows New Urbanist guidelines, but almost everything about it is still status quo. I like that the buildings are reminiscent of traditional neighborhood developments, which is why I focused on that during the tour, but there are some serious problems with how public housing is thought of in this country and Q Terrace is not immune those problems.
I’m sure there is a good, convincing argument out there for post-modernism over New Urbanism, but I haven’t heard it yet. I am not saying that there are not other good choices out there right now besides New Urbanism-there probably are-I just personally prefer classic design principles, the resulting aesthetics, and its ability to age well. I consider myself a classicist, but I do not feel it is ‘right’, just an opinion.

Nan,
I had been working on a Whalley Ave plan, but it is taking much longer than I originally thought, so any kind of presentation will most likely have to wait until March. I will e-mail you before then and hopefully during the March WEB community meeting (or another time) I can give the presentation I was working on this past month.

Bill,
Robert Moses nearly single-handedly changed this country from an urbanist society to a suburbanist one in just a few short decades. I bet at the beginning of his career people thought his ideas were naive, too.

posted by: wilburcrossgrad on January 26, 2010 5:09pm

Jonathan, I agree with a lot of the ideas that you presented here and through your postings as Norton Street. I’m curious as to your opinion on magnet schools. You said that people working at a school should live in the surrounding neighborhood. While I didn’t really know you when you were a student at Cross, I am pretty sure you don’t live in East Rock, Fair Haven, or Newhallville. Perhaps you biked every day, but more likely you took the bus or occasionally drove. Even if by biking you reduced your carbon footprint, you still lacked ties to the surrounding community. If you had to redo your high school experience, would you choose a high school closer to your neighborhood such as Hillhouse or Career?

I think your ideas are good ones, but some are not very practical within the current political attitude that choice—about where you live, work, and go to school—is the best thing for society.

posted by: pat on January 26, 2010 8:25pm

What a great tour and what wonderful insights.
What would your vision be for the Route 34 Plan of Development? I’d love to know.

posted by: Ali on January 26, 2010 8:38pm

I’m glad to see that you aren’t studying in a vacuum and have at least stated that your design preferences are just that. I’d be willing to bet that a good percentage of people share your aesthetic. I find the styles of new urbanism appropriate in some places but a sad and forced attempt at nostagia in others. But as you stated, it is a personal preference.

The one part I disagree with is the premise that changes in architecture will lead to the changes in our way of living that, as you state, are necessary in the world today.

I think a monumental shift will need to occur in the way people live and think (using transit, ditching the cars, living near where they work, smaller houses etc) before your vision can be a reality. Architecture and city planning aside, getting Americans to change their way of life is the real task. In the meantime, parking garages and Walgreens will be built - and you may be working on them!

Again, I applaud your enthusiasm and passion and wish you success in the field. You’ve got a lot of work to do!

posted by: Jonathan Hopkins on January 26, 2010 9:19pm

This may be a record…

wilburcrossgrad,
You make some very good points.
The opinions I’ve expressed in my posts are one’s that I’ve only recently (in the past 3 years) developed to some degree of intelligence, which is mostly due to the exposure to urban studies, city planning and architecture that happened at the tail end high school and after graduation.
I did attend West Hills magnet school for k-8 and Cross for 9-12 along with ECA. West Hills was one of the top public schools in New Haven in the early 90s and my parents tried for several years to get me and my brothers into it, which they were eventually successful at. I was automatically accepted to Hillhouse in 2002-2003 due to my residence, but after some deliberation I decided to apply (correct word?) to Cross due mostly to a common perception that it offered some better courses and had some better teachers than Cross, also Hillhouse only had a handful (or less) of students who attended ECA and therefore did not supply a bus to the school. A large number of my friends were also planning on attending Cross, which also influenced my decision somewhat. During my time at Cross, I used the bus, bikes and drove at various times. Looking back now, if I had to redo it, I would have attended Hillhouse over Career or Cross due to its proximity to my house and I would have just used the existing city bus system to get to ECA (or bike or walk since it really isn’t that far). I also had a lot of friends who attended Hillhouse and I doubt that the classes and teaching staff there differ very much from Cross in reality.
One thing that attending these schools did that is important, was that I spent time in very different parts of New Haven for long periods of time-I went from West Rock to City Point to Wooster Square to East Rock to Downtown and I had friends from all over the city. These were experiences that have influenced my views a great deal and without them I would be a different person. However, this type of variety of city neighborhoods can easily be replaced by the (re)introduction of various civic organizations and public events located around the city that are coupled with improved transit that connects the city better.
After attending a magnet school and attending a cross-town high school, I have the opinion that at the pre-school/nursery school/day-care/k-4 level all public schools should be neighborhood based except for 1 or 2 specialty schools. Every resident of the city should have an elementary school (pre-school level) within walking distance of their home.
At the 5-8 grade level, schools should still be neighborhood based, but they should be larger and less numerous than elementary schools, which are more community-based than neighborhood-based. These middle schools should be within walking distance of most children’s homes. For those not close enough to walk, then biking, transit and carpooling should be available options. There should also be some k-8 schools in neighborhoods where it is appropriate.
High schools ideally would be centrally located (like Cross and Hillhouse used to be prior to the construction of their new facilities in the 1950s). Kids from all over the city used to use the existing trolley systems to get to school or walked if they lived in or close enough to downtown. This would allow the high schools to offer varying curriculum focused on trades, or arts or sciences, which becomes necessary at advanced educational levels like high school. The central locations would also get rid of the neighborhood ties that the high schools currently have, which would allow kids to pick the schools based on what they want to study more so than where the school is.
To me, these conditions for the schools are an ideal that I would like to see implemented within my lifetime, which may even be too optimistic a time frame. So as a way to make the long term goal realizable, a series of short term goals needs to be established, one of which could be to get rid of the elaborate private yellow busing system and use some of the savings to improve existing city bus lines so that children can continue to attend various schools while neighborhood reform is underway, which promises to be a difficult task that will likely have some rough periods over the likely decades long process.
I believe that schools are a product of neighborhoods, therefore, we should focus our energy not on school reform, but on neighborhood reform, because once our neighborhoods are successful, the schools will automatically be successful. It is a very new phenomenon for people to choose where to live based on the quality of the schools. The type of the unintended consequences that stemmed from the mid-20th century decentralization of urban areas through suburbanization, which produced the severe level of culture degradation we currently have, has produced poor performing, mostly urban schools more than anything else. Prior to this mass suburbanization, pretty much all schools within New Haven, and other urban areas were reliable places for children to receive an education, which had a lot to do with not only the centralized economies of urban areas at the time that produced prosperity but it had to do with the fact that teachers and students came from the same neighborhoods, the same streets, which created an atmosphere of accountability for students, as well as teachers, actions outside of school.
I had elementary school classmates who had the same teachers as I did, they took the same classes at the same time, did the same assignments, yet they still did not do as well as I did, and its not because they did not receive the same school education, its because of factors outside of school in their neighborhoods and homes. All the access to a top magnet public school education doesn’t mean squat when you’re going home to a neighborhood where you witness drug dealers selling destruction to communities, people getting stabbed and you’re waking up in the middle of the night to gunfire on a regular basis. And many situations at home for children aren’t any better than the streets or are worse, for that matter. A common trend is for these kids not to care about school because they perceive there to be far more important things to worry about than reading James and Giant Peach. The thing they worry about is survival. One way of doing so is by simply getting out of New Haven, which can be accomplished by working and saving money, by living with relatives in other places, or by working hard in school to go to college and beyond. Unfortunately, often times college is a rare experience for kids because before they are out of middle school, these kids will make the decision to stop being afraid of the streets (and home) and resort to becoming part of the violence, community destruction and crime, if not as a way to fit in, then as a way to get money (seen as a way out, which is a pursuit often cut short by multiple imprisonments, lack of mainstream hire-ability, etc) or avoid being a victim of crimes through protection in groups of peers. There are also some kids that grow up never having the intentions of being a productive citizen, but the most common route to the edge of mainstream culture is when generally good kids have many experiences over time that push them certain ways. The vast majority of children in this city generally do not commit to a life of crime, but there is a somewhat sizable, and enormously influential group that do and we will not solve that level of social isolation and cultural degradation through reforming schools, it will come from neighborhood (and broader) level reform. And once neighborhoods are successful, there becomes little or no need for magnet schools.
As far as choice about where to live, work and go to school, I feel that these things are ultimately unneccessary luxuries that do not actually give us freedom, they merely serve as the illusion of freedom with the reality of a higher cost of living generated from inherent extra expenses. My grandfather worked in a pharmacy in a small town outside New York, where he, my grandmother, father, uncle and aunt lived in a second story apartment above retail along the Main Street of the town until my grandfather got his own Pharmacy and was able to personally build his dream house a short distance from the center of town. That type of relationship of work to residence was often ignored by people in my grandfather’s generation, who opted to take the suburban dream and mutate it with the use of federal subsidies into a way of life defined by out of scale living. My grandfather could have returned from WW2 and built his home in the same location and worked very far away to the detriment of another community, but he either purposefully or incidentally possessed a level of modesty that many Americans did not at that time and continue to not possess now. My parents lived in a first floor apartment in a multifamily house off Whalley Ave in the Edgewood neighborhood before buying a house a few blocks from my father’s place of employment and they sent my oldest brother to the neighborhood school for several years until we got into West Hills. When that same brother got a job in Baltimore, he rented a rowhouse with several people a short distance from his place of employment and eventually was able to get his own modest rowhouse in the same area a short distance from his job. Same with many other relatives and people that I know. Perhaps I am lucky to have been born into a family that cared about committing to and investing in a particular place with long term residency, but I do not think its coincidence that my family has made very intelligent decisions about where we live in relation to where we get employment, I think it was done on purpose because of either a subconscious or conscious understanding of a useful living arrangement in relation to fellow citizens.
I can only hope to pass on to others the wisdom that I have had the fortune to inherit from my family and friends. While many families across the nation who are, on the surface, no different from my family in terms of income, standard of living, family size, college expenses, etc are experiencing extremely tough times that I believe to be derived from a cost of living that, over decades, greatly exceeded anything that was sustainable. So it seems that the idea of choice is far more realizable when expenditures are limited through intelligent decisions made about where one lives relative to where one works and shops.

ali,
I see New Urbanism as a movement that picks the threads of history up and brings them forward, or at least tries. Modernism abandoned the threads of history and started basically from scratch, so while many New Urbanist designs are straight up rip-offs of other buildings, I think in 25 years, we’ll see a completely new language of architecture emerge out of this movement that is entirely unique, but that takes time to develop and right now, in depth studies into traditional design principles is needed to inform how a new architecture is created for the future. So, you may be right, I think you should give the movement some more time to grow and develop itself, which I think will naturally lead it aware from straight up imitation and into its own.

As a side note, I do not think cars and parking are evil. I do, however, think car dependence and overly built, improperly placed car infrastructure is dumb and wasteful. Walking should be the most desirable option to get places for every American. Biking should be another nearly equally good option and convenient, efficient and affordable transit should be another good option, followed by carpooling and using a zip car, while driving a single-occupancy automobile should be a last resort. This can only be the standard once nearly all communities in this country are designed and scaled properly. Until then, when driving is, hopefully rarely, the best option, ideally it is done with a hybrid or other fuel efficient car. Doing this would greatly reduce the need for excessive parking infrastructure located off-street, which would reduce the need for curb cuts, which would increase the number of on-street parking spaces.

posted by: robn on January 26, 2010 9:40pm

JH,

Failed modernism in New Haven has more to do with policy and management than with design. Modernism and New Urbanism aren’t mutually exclusive. For a nice study of precedent do some research on the Tel Aviv’s White City.

posted by: Steve Ross, Human on January 27, 2010 9:10am

Norton Street,

At your friendly neighborhood Yale Manuscripts and Archives. Some of it may interest you (and further your mission).

New Haven Redevelopment Agency Records
MS 1814
http://hdl.handle.net/10079/fa/mssa.ms.1814

Edward Joseph Logue Papers
MS 959
http://hdl.handle.net/10079/fa/mssa.ms.0959

Maurice Emile Henri Rotival papers
MS 1380
http://hdl.handle.net/10079/fa/mssa.ms.1380

Eero Saarinen Collection
MS 593
http://hdl.handle.net/10079/fa/mssa.ms.0593

Yale University, Lectures and Presentations
RU 880
http://hdl.handle.net/10079/fa/mssa.ru.0880

posted by: City Hall Watch on January 27, 2010 10:34am

Norton Street:

I very much appreciated your tour and will enjoy reading your future posts in light of it. Excellent point about the relationship of schools and neighborhoods; of teachers and where they live vs. where they teach. It seems there would need to be some additional incentives to get teachers to live close by particularly the more troubled areas of New Haven. Would any be willing to do so? Is the current foreclosure crisis an opportunity to buy low, sell low and target teachers as the market. Maybe even provide them with a below market mortgage, with penalty clause, to entice them to live there for 10 years.

posted by: East Rockette on January 27, 2010 11:06am

Quoth Bill, cheaply: “It doesn’t surprise me that Norton Street is a young man based on his naive ideas.”

Funnily enough, I always pictured Norton Street as a thirty-something woman, based on his/her thoughtful and articulate writings about a city with which s/he obviously had a deep and thriving relationship. I’m delighted to meet the person behind the nom de clavier, and glad there is so much youthful energy and a long future ahead of him.

posted by: Francine Caplan on January 27, 2010 3:22pm

So great to have Jonathan Hopkins in our neighborhood and in our city. We need people of his generation to speak up about urban planning in New Haven. Jonathan, perhaps you might like to join our citizens group trying to change Whalley Avenue? We have been challenging the City to create a beautiful Whalley in facade work, landscaping and rebuilding. It would be an economic boom for that street but it really has not happened the way we want it. You make your parents, Judy and Jim, proud.

posted by: Tanner on January 27, 2010 10:57pm

Oh Gee we now have a male Bitsy Clark, no surprise he doesn’t like Garage’s. Loves Government subsidized housing replacing old government housing projects, Loves the reconstructed schools designed replacing the schools 40 years old that became obsolete. Hates seeing cars in the city any of these designs and plans create a job that does not cost taxpayer dollars or add to government payrolls.

posted by: Jonathan Hopkins on January 28, 2010 1:08pm

Tanner,
I didn’t really understand anything you just said, but I’ll try to clear some things up anyways.
If you can show me how places that are not designed for human occupation-parking lots, garages, highways, etc-are better than places designed for humans, then I’m all ears.
I am not in favor of public housing, it is my hope that this country can get rid of the need for all public housing except for certain and rare situations. For Q Terrace, I focused on the architecture of the housing, which I believe has the ability to become privately owned by individuals in the future because of its design, unlike suburban subdivisions, shopping malls, housing barracks and towers, which lack flexibility and were built in a vacuum to only serve single purposes for their entire existences.
I like some of the new schools, and dislike other ones. My critiques were based on the buildings architectural worth, not the social impact so much. This was an architectural tour, to discuss other things would haven been inappropriate and misplaced so I tried to avoid doing so when possible.
I am in favor of very minimal government, but that can only happen when major social and economic problems have been addressed. In the 20th century, our economy radically changed, resulting in a huge decrease in available working class jobs, so government subsidies stepped in to replace this disconnect, which created dependence. It is the government’s job, along with citizens, to bring back adequate numbers of working class jobs to alleviate the government dependence that has become so widespread. Only then can government be drastically downsized at national, region and local levels.

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