The Social Connections Co-op City

 

Co-op City New York

Discussion of the social aspects of Co-op development.

Coop City was developed and opened in 1968.  There are over 15,000 residential units in the development of 35 high rise buildings and 7 townhouse clusters.  These buildings cover only 20% of the landmass at 320 acres.  So, there is ample room for green space, park space, and recreation opportunities which all create great social space for the more than 50,000 residents.

The Mission Statement as stated by their website is “The mission of the board of directors of the Riverbay Corporation is to preserve affordable housing while maintaining an environment that provides and sustains a high quality of life standard for all cooperators.”

Also, they said “The Board of Directors will apply special focus on fostering an environment of cooperative living that supports a sense of community and that encourages shareholder participation in the overall governance of the residency.”

In the development there are 3 shopping centers, 3 community centers, 8 parking garages, professional offices, and an education park with elementary through high school.  There is a large shopping complex adjacent to the property.  There are multiple types of public transportation.

The community has many features within walking distance and there are 8 parking garages with 10,000 parking spaces.  There are amenities for all ages from senior activities to playgrounds for families.  The buildings are connected by bike and walking paths and have access to community centers that provide lunch, activities and programs, trips, and other activities especially for seniors.  Other amenities the walks connected to are outdoor exercise equipment, basketball and tennis courts, little league field, and a community garden.  There are churches on the property.

The community centers also have rooms for rent for meeting parties and family events.  There are shopping centers, grocery, convenience stores, restaurants, dry cleaners, and medical offices and a post office.  There are additional options at the nearby large shopping district.

All this discussion about the development depicts what is at the development.  Reviewing the development, you see that the people have opportunity to get to know each other and have personal ownership of the community.  There could be many reasons for this including the coop nature of the development and that there is no subleasing of the buildings.  But I think the main reasons step around the fact that the development is an actual town and a community of residents with all aspects of a town.  The mixed-use aspect of the development provides all parts of life for the people including space for people to meet and visit socially.  Making points of connection is one of the hallmarks of creating a social development.  Places to casually meet and things to casually do as you live your life daily.  This development has all that and more.  And it has a long history of success.

I have only begun to review the fine points of this project for social connection.  There is much here to review!

https://www.coopcity.com/

Pruitt-Igo

 

The Social Design Elements of Pruitt-Igo Development, Saint Louis Missouri 1954-1973

This blog will review the 57-acre Pruitt Igo that development that was built in Saint Louis in 1954 to house 10,000 people.  The project featured 33 11 story apartment towers with 2870 apartment units.  They were beautifully windowed towers overlooking the city and the green landscape and walkways surrounding them.  The project was a failure for many reasons but contained some good design elements that would have been a benefit for social connection and community building design for the residents had the project been installed at another time and maybe another place. 

The issues and failures of the project had more to do with factors outside of design.  Some called the design a modernist design failure based on the theories of modernist design.  The heavy racism of the times and of Saint Louis including the movement of white people and people of means out of the city and into the suburban areas of Saint Louis was a big factor.  The blue-collar manufacturing jobs were moving out of the city as well.  The project was designed as a white section and a black section of development.  But before it opened the laws did not allow this and the project was integrated which further complicated the success of the project in the current culture of Saint Louis.

The city was able to build the project with federal and special funds but was not able to maintain the facility with the money available with rent, so the project quickly became an unmaintained and unsafe development.  Upon completion in 54, only 9% of the facility was unoccupied.  By 1960 it was 16% and declined quickly after that.  The decision to make the entire design be 11 story high rise buildings with surrounding residential areas was a poor decision and increased the odd character of the development.

Also, there were design decisions made by removing some of the original designed features that would have helped the design.  Originally the design included varying heights and densities such as low rise, high rise, and walk ups.  Other designed features included playgrounds, ground floor restrooms, and additional landscaping.  Many of the project features were installed as lower cost versions of the elements such as the elevators.  Though some of the features and amenities were subsequently installed later after 1958 the project was already in heavy decline.  Pruitt Igo was highly praised by some publications such as Architectural Forum.  But those praises were lost as the development declined. 

The development covered 57 acres and so the 33 buildings had 1.7 acres per unit.  The spaces between the buildings were intended to be public social space and they did create good space.  People were able to congregate and visit and do things outside.  The landscape was beautiful and was more like urban public park space.  It was designed much like a resort space in condominiums of the beaches.  But much of the landscape and trees were never installed or realized.  And being underfunded those spaces became no mans land and unsafe.  The grass became dirt and the landscape shrubs and trees died.  The low cost choice of making the elevators skip stop elevators that only stopped at every 3^rd floor was a very problematic decision that caused issues for the residents.  Though more residents brushed shoulders socially because of this decision and may have increased the social connections.

With so much space between the buildings it is probable that other uses of the space should have been designed such as retail and office space.  Mixed use might have been one element the design was missing.

Listening to the interviews of the residents, many of the people did develop relationships with one another because of the design with the neighbors nearby.  They speak of long-term friendships made.  Others speak of fear and concern about living in poor conditions and crime infested development.  There were also issues with the requirements of the father leaving the home for the residents to be able to live in the development as low-income residents.

To the right is an image showing a concept of Pruitt Igo if it was developed with a Mixed use design.  This is a beautiful development and includes many elements that would promote community, jobs, safety, recreation and a healthy lifestyle.  Elements in this design would have helped Pruitt Igo, but would not have overcome the other social and political issues of the times and the significant issues of maintenance commitments of the public housing authority.

In summary, the Pruitt Igo development had potential to be a great community and met some of those standards for a short time.  But the times, the laws and policies, the politics and social fabric of Saint Louis, the design decisions for construction, and the maintenance program caused the development to decline quickly and became a failure in all areas of the development.

 

https://en.wikiarquitectura.com/building/pruitt-igoe-residential-complex/

AD Classics: Pruitt-Igoe Housing Project / Minoru Yamasaki | ArchDaily

https://nextstl.com/2013/01/what-should-be-pruitt-igoe-as-a-walkable-mixed-use-neighborhood/

https://samlimaarchitecture.blogspot.com/2012/06/pruitt-igoe-re-imagined-as-walkable.html

Village Homes

 A beginning study of the village homes social spaces

First designed in the 70’s, Village homes is considered to be a success story in using alternative design and building practices to achieve sustainable and social goals for the community in an area where the large cities and sprawling developments outside them are missing designed green, sustainable development that included social spaces.

How did they achieve these goals?

There was a committed core of property owners and designers that pushed the envelope to achieve their goals through an onslaught of “no” and “we cannot allow you to do that” type of rules and laws against what they were trying to achieve.  The laws were not there for them, and they had to push.  They pushed past what was feasible and allowed as well as what financially was normal for a development.  They continued their vision.

It is one thing to say that this development did some good things towards sustainable development and creating social spaces and it is another thing to say that it is a model.  Every development will fall short in some areas and this one does.  But there are some good principles to look at here.

Since my focus in this blog is social spaces in development, I will focus on that though there are many good sustainable principles in their development.

What principles of social design were used and achieved in Village Homes.

There are three areas of focus here:

·        Shared spaces.

o   Open space: 23 acres of orchards, vineyards, greenbelts stretching the property.

o   Spaces between buildings and walkways: many green common areas including a big green open space near the buildings.  There are many small green spaces one might call pocket parks.  There are many areas to stroll through from building to building and to the other green spaces such as the orchards.

·        Shared amenities such as the solar heated pool, a community center, a preschool, café, a dance studio, and office and workshop spaces.

·        Cluster layout of homes:

I will start with the cluster layout of the homes.  They are clustered in small lots which is one way to bring people together is by living close together.  This one principle forces people to interact and concentrates both the common living space the allows for open space and other communal space in the development for other social interaction. 

There are unfenced backyards the further bring people together.  This will also introduce some elements of conflict of space ownership and issues with maintenance and pets, but it is a good idea for social interaction.

The homes mostly face the common open green space and share walking paths that helps people interact as they move from place to place and as they sit in their outside porch space.  It is a community-oriented neighborhood.

The streets are narrow at less than 25’ wide and there is no parking on the streets.  But there are off-street parking areas for the homes. 

The tree plantings near the buildings and along the streets bring the scale of the buildings and streets down to the pedestrian level as do the plantings along the buildings and walkways making the spaces cooler and more inviting to the residents.

This type of development requires the residents to have more commitment to the maintenance and upkeep of their spaces than the typical neighborhood.  There usually must also be some sort of neighborhood association and maintenance plan cost to keep of with the maintenance of the areas.  The users keep up with the orchards, which has been one source of conflict for the residents.  Everyone has their own idea of what upkeep means and what participating in the orchards means as they try to partake of the fruit.

I think one drawback to the development of social space in this development is the lack of a front entry or even a back entry for social space.  The side entry of the houses was considered a compromise, but it essentially creates a social space that is alone between the houses.  The concept of sitting on your front or back porch and casually interacting with residents is not existent in this neighborhood.  The village home concept relied on the movement from the home to other space to create social contact.

They do however create pocket areas through the use of the cul-de-sac which might be spurned in other design philosophies such as new urbanist studies, but the cul-de-sac design does create concentrated social space with those who live in those areas where children can play safely, and adults can interact there.

In other ways the cul-de-sac focus separates the residents from each other at different parts of the development and may separate the pedestrian movement as well.  Connection should be the focus even if it is by car, bike, and pedestrian walkway movement.  One writer suggested that this one element created much of the isolation of the development and they could have achieved their desired result of calming traffic in other ways while still creating connection at the street level.

All in all there are good elements of social connection at Village Homes.  There are many things that could be improved for increased connectivity.

 

Credits:

http://web.mit.edu/nature/archive/student_projects/2007/justinf/11.308/index.html

https://www.articulturedesignfarm.com/village-homes-the-coolest-subdivisi

 

Boszoom

 

Project: Boszoom—Pijnacker-Nootdorp

Client: Pijnacker-Nootdorp Municipality 2014-1019

The project is a diverse 600 house development called Boszoom, meaning Forest Edge.  It is part of the larger Keijzershof development at the southern edge of the city of Pijnacker-Nootdorp between Rotterdam and The Hague. 

Techniques used in this development are car free edges and interior, vegetated corridors and connections, porous paving, rainwater collection and infiltration basins (bio swales), the use of natural building materials, and energy efficient homes.  

The neighborhood is divided up into various types of homes with diverse spaces in between homes.  Some areas have single family homes, some are villas, and some multifamily buildings. 

The project uses branches of vegetated water infiltrating fingers extending between and through the houses into a central green lined stream.  The spaces created between the buildings become friendly welcoming spaces for social connection for the residents.  

Since the cars are relegated to the outside, the people get out of their cars and walk and bike through the development to their homes and other destinations.  The spaces provide creative play areas for kids and walking sitting spaces for adults.

While the development creates ecological functions for green space and water infiltration, from the stand point of an ecological designer it is more like a suburban design with homes situated around suburban green space.  

It would take more focused design work for those spaces to become more “natural” or be truly ecological related to the native flora and fauna of their native ecosystem.  Having lived in cities and the country, this development looks like the parks in the city that are green but not natural.  But on the other hand it is a movement in the right direction for developments to design with more natural functions and neighborhood social space.

Groene Mient, The Netherlands

 

Groene Mient, The Netherlands

The designer is Bos Hofman, HofmanDujardin is an architecture firm founded in 1999 and located in Amsterdam. The team is specialized in architecture, renovations and interior designs.

Among many techniques they include community design of private and communal space using roof and bioswale systems for surface water collection and infiltration creating a communal garden.

The community is a CPO; collective privately owned commissioned project.  Each of the 33 owners bought their land individually but collectively developed the design through an architecture firm. They embraced the social and ecologic values of the Groene Mient Association to develop their project.  These include energy neutral home construction and energy self-sufficiency, non-fossil fuel use, use of natural and sustainable materials, reuse of materials and water from the site, flexible and accessible home design, and innovative technologies to achieve these goals.

They studied the soils and the ground water table and found that they could achieve water collection and infiltration to the groundwater level in a positive functional manner. So, they used techniques to collect and store the water on site to achieve these goals by using vegetated roof and porous paving systems to collect store and direct the water to a communal vegetated courtyard garden water feature called a wadi.  Excess water was directed to an overflow area.

The whole project is designed to collect and reuse water and allow infiltration including the parking and walkways being made of gravel and crushed stone.  They also used native plants with the courtyard garden.  They achieved these goals together.

The only criticism I would give is that the street level view of the houses is very stark and lacking vegetation and friendliness.  

The goals of social communal space is not fully achieved in this stark uninviting environment at the street.  But they pass those issues when you enter the site and move between the houses into the natural functional beauty and social friendliness of the communal interior spaces.