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Suggested Reading on the I'On Village Walk |
The landscape through which the I'On Village Walk runs is the product of a school of thought called the New Urbanism, expressed here through the concept of a Traditional Neighborhood Development. The New Urbanism is also sometimes called Smart growth. In addition to Traditional Neighborhood Developments like I'On Village, the New Urbanism is also seen in the redevelopment of inner cities, greyfield redevelopments of former industrial sites, brownfield developments of contaminated sites and other reuse concepts. These books are a good introduction to New Urbanist thought.
The
I'On Village Walk Guide - The guide is also available online at www.ioncommunity.com
in PDF format. Copies of an early, printed edition of the guide are available for checkout
at the Charleston County Library. An online, HTML,
version of the Guide as a series of linked web pages, contains
additional background and commentary not in the printed guides. Guides
for the Eastwalk I'On and Westwalk I'On
are both available.
I'On at Ten, Life in the New Village- This book was created by I'On BizNet, Inc. to commemorate the 10th. Anniversary of the community. It's a 64 page, full color coffee table type book with images, artwork and articles by residents of the community. You can see a copy at the I'On Realty Office on I'On Square or you can buy a copy at deGaussi Interiors on I'On Square or Sweet Olive Home and Garden at the intersection of Sowell St. and Shelmore Blvd. After copyright is complete, copes will be donated to the Charleston County library system for accession to their collections and may be available there when you read this.
Mount Pleasant, The Victorian Village by local historian Mary Julia Royall is more than nostalgia. Our community began as a carefully planned, walkable mixed use landscape. Neighborhood schools, public transit (Mt. Pleasant’s forgotten streetcars) and landmark churches could be found together on a grid of streets in the Old Village. Here is proof of what East Cooper was like before sprawl, richly illustrated and colloquially narrated by an author who loves this town. Every citizen should read this book.
The Town of Mount Pleasant’s comprehensive plan is like holy scripture. Everybody talks about it. Few people actually read it, Fewer still live by it. Now up for its periodic five year revision, the plan deserves to be read. It is rich in factual detail. It has existed, in previous revisions since the mid 80’s. Its last section touches on Traditional Neighborhood development modeled on Mount Pleasant’s Old Village and goals for Planned Unit Development which incorporate Smart Growth concepts.
If Mt. Pleasant hasn’t reached the goals set out in these plans, the creation of which have taken so much time and expense, it is in part because they are largely unread outside of the planning department. Planning is thrilled when people come by to look at it. Copies of both the 1998 and 1989 plans can also be found in the noncirculating reference section of the Charleston County Library, downtown and on Mathis Ferry Road.
If you can read only one book on Smart Growth, Suburban nation: the rise of sprawl and the decline of the American Dream by Andres Duaney, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk and Jeff Speckis the best choice. It covers the history of the American landscape, the current cultural crisis of its disappointments (more extreme elsewhere than here) and efforts to reform planning, zoning and architecture to create more sustainable and rewarding communities. Diagrams and plans are generous. There are enough stories and anecdotes to hold your interest. Comparisons between the new urbanism and other models are made. These authors’ upcoming Smart Growth Manual promises to be a citizens handbook to make these ideas real.
The Geography of Nowhere and Home from Nowhere by James Howard Kunstler are both fiercely opinionated, but engagingly written. The first is an indictment and the second a study of hopeful models. Both are witty enough to read at the beach.
Great
Streets by Allan R. Jacobs (1993) is a study of great streets
and public ways of various types around the world. The hyper
efficient American interstate highway is breaking down to gridlock
and driving people to road rage. Here from a winding medieval
street (Copenhagen’s Stroget) to Richmond, Virginia’s
Monument Ave. and the street ensemble of Bath England are rich models
for public ways of every description serving commerce, pedestrian and
vehicle. This large format book has detailed cross sections,
street grids and wash drawings showing how these streets work.
We pay dearly for vacations near streets like these, but in utter
deference to the automobile’s demands for high speed travel we
have stopped building them. Now that traffic is barely moving
anyway, Jacobs suggests it is time to study the life of the
world’s great streets, which his chapters do from the opening of
the bakeries before dawn in Barcelona until lonely heels striking the
cobbles of London tell us the public houses have closed. The
Boulevard Book, by Jacobs, McDonald & Rofe is a contemporary
study of how great streets can be built. Both useful books, but
I liked Great Streets best for its human and narrative content.
Celebrating the Third Place (2001) by Ray Oldenberg addresses smart growth at its atomic level, the increasingly scarce "third places" such as coffee houses and pubs where neighbors gather to talk and connect with the community. Locally owned, often by dedicated small businesspeople, this book describes in intimate, street level detail, how these places work and how they create a needed "third place" between work and home. Some chapters cover places in operation for half a century, others new places struggling to find their way. One unusual chapter compares life in prison to the often alienating existence of the suburban auto strip.
Places like the Good Neighbor Coffee Shop, the Blue Moon Tavern & Joe’s Cozy Corner are special. America is creating a landscape where they can’t exist. At one time, Mount Pleasant’s Krispy Creme on Coleman Blvd. was such a place. They are essential to an enjoyable landscape, the goal of a walk, the worn forum of celebration and a well of solace on bad days. This book charts the way back for those who would build and patronize them. Every neighborhood where they can practically exist needs and deserves one.
A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander traces patterns of planning across all scales of human community organization from a single room or office to infrastructure grids for a city of 100 thousand people. Alexander and his students studied built environments, took measurements and surveyed usage. They discovered, behind the familiar styles of traditional architecture and town planning, common mathematic facts and principles, which repeated through different cultures and types of buildings.. For instance, measurements of porches and surveys of their use revealted that porches narrower than six feet were seldom used. A fascinating work of 1000 pages that would enable you to plan anything from a bus shelter to a major city park. Now thirty years old and dated in places, this was a groundbreaking work that is still read and used today.
These books take the reader from Pitt Street to Paris, from past to future and from grand ceremonial avenue to the cozy corner of the neighborhood shop. It is a journey that begins in a book which could end, not far from now, in our community.
Revised March 22, 2008
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