{"id":546,"date":"2007-03-21T23:11:55","date_gmt":"2007-03-22T03:11:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/?p=546"},"modified":"2007-03-21T23:11:55","modified_gmt":"2007-03-22T03:11:55","slug":"new-urbanism-and-airstreams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/?p=546","title":{"rendered":"New Urbanism and Airstreams"},"content":{"rendered":"

I thought I was a fan of the principles of “New Urbanism”, but perhaps I am a fraud. Or maybe New Urbanism is — I can’t decide.<\/p>\n

New Urbanism<\/a> is a theory of community design that calls for closely-spaced residential developments with planned centers of retail shops and other community features (schools, parks, etc.) The general idea is to develop communities that fight sprawl by giving people most of what they need right in their own little village. <\/p>\n

New Urbanism is one of those great ideas that doesn’t always get executed well. During our Airstream travels we’ve visited several New Urbanist communities, including Celebration<\/a> FL, Seaside FL, Denver’s Stapleton, and Civano here in Tucson. All of these places have their distinctive features and advantages, but of them all my favorite is Stapleton<\/a>. It has real diversity and the community seems well planned.<\/p>\n

Seaside<\/a> is marvelous too — you might have seen it in the movie “The Truman Show” — and it even has a couple of Airstreams in town, converted to retail shops. One, I believe, sells sushi. But if you don’t have big bucks don’t even bother asking about living there. This sort of belies a principle of New Urbanism, that it should incorporate a mix of affordable housing. Once upon a time there was affordable housing in Seaside, but not any more.<\/p>\n

This sort of thing is on my mind because we are so busy looking at real estate. Today we checked out Tucson’s new Armory Park Del Sol<\/a> which is an urban infill community that draws on New Urbanist ideals. Armory Park Del Sol’s big claim is energy efficiency — every house is well insulated (a rarity in this climate) and they all have solar panels on the roof.<\/p>\n

But this development fell into the trap of so many others before it. Originally housing was supposed to be available at the affordable rate of $80,000 but by the time it got through the development process that vanished. We found one resale on the market, and at $265,000, it is one of the cheaper units available.<\/p>\n

We also spent 40 minutes driving slowly through Civano<\/a>, and noting all the properties for sale. I hate to admit it, but despite my intellectual interest in New Urbanism, I just can’t get psyched about Civano or most of the other New Urbanist communities. On one hand, I’m always disappointed when I visit the communities and find that the core principles are eroding or were never there: affordable housing, a mix of housing styles, energy efficiency, traffic calming, parks, walkability, discernable centers, etc. The pressure of local real estate seems to overwhelm the ideals of the developers. <\/p>\n

On the other hand, I find that being a boy from a rural state, the crowded nature of New Urbanist communities gives me claustrophobia. So even if I found the ideal community, I might not buy into it. Again, Stapleton is the exception because of its broad open central park. Does this make me a poseur<\/em>, just another guy who talks the talk but can’t walk the walk?<\/p>\n

But perhaps it’s not just me. Have you noticed two contradictory trends? RV travel and ownership has risen dramatically since 2001, and yet most new communities (of any type, not just New Urbanist) don’t have any provision for allowing homeowners to keep their RVs nearby. To make matters worse, they usually ban RV parking entirely. (This is because RV’s are considered an eyesore, in the same category as rusty old cars on blocks. Sadly, many RV owners agree with this — except where their own rig is concerned. Then it’s the most beautiful thing they’ve ever owned.)<\/p>\n

This means that an increasing number of people are effectively exorcised from buying into certain communities. Buying a home where we can’t have our Airstream nearby and ready to go would be like buying into a “55+ community” and just seeing Emma on weekends. The Airstream is a member of the family! <\/p>\n

So while I still want to believe in the concept of New Urbanism, it flies in the face of my reality, at least as it is executed in most places. Can’t we live in a nice community where RV parking is allowed at least in a dedicated lot nearby? Can we dwell in a planned village, walk to “town”, have bicycle- and pedestrian-friendly streets, and still own a travel trailer? I’d like to believe we can, but so far we are not finding anything that meets the challenge, at least not here. <\/p>\n

Compromise is the nature of real estate shopping, and I fear that in our case the compromise will mean our Airstream taking an back seat. Poor trailer. By the end of this summer it will have been our home for two years, and it will be hard to put it away, even temporarily. Perhaps in the next few weeks we’ll find the ideal home where it can stay with us, gleaming in the side yard and reminding us of adventures yet to come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I thought I was a fan of the principles of “New Urbanism”, but perhaps I am a fraud. Or maybe New Urbanism is — I can’t decide. New Urbanism is a theory of community design that calls for closely-spaced residential developments with planned centers of retail shops and other community features (schools, parks, etc.) The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=546"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}