Aerial photo of "New Town at St. Charles" - new urbanist community

[Peter3hg]

I would hate to live there, it's just so bland.

 

[Interrobang]

http://img117.imageshack.**/img117/6332/aerial200707608f3dfyi7.jpg
This is an aerial photo of "New Town at St. Charles", a new urbanism community in Missouri. The whole thing has been built in the past three years or so. I love it.
http://www.newtownatstcharles.com

I can?t find anything great in something pureley planned and not grown. It?s interesting if Towns and neigborhoods just "grow". They might not be perfect, somethings might be better otherwise ... but this looks just to sterile for my taste. I like the water-bits, but the residential areas ... I?d die of boredom, just looking out of the window.
Don?t get me wrong, having a general plan is fine, has to be, it can?t just all be anarchy and stuff like parks or lakes have to be thought of ... but this looks like it is full of clones ...
I don?t know if you get what i mean, so here a little Picture of where I grew up ... it too was planned in parts ... but it grew over more then 40 Years (Plans were often changed, stuff added, taken away). It?s not the best and prettiest area of the world, but I think it?s much nicer than that Borghive ...
http://img114.imageshack.**/img114/1379/homesweethomedj1.jpg

 

[swek]

So that is how hell looks like.

 

[jetsetter]

I can?t find anything great in something pureley planned and not grown. It?s interesting if Towns and neigborhoods just "grow". They might not be perfect, somethings might be better otherwise ... but this looks just to sterile for my taste.

In the US that has resulted in Subdivisions. Just a bunch of same houses with no center. The New Urbanism effort is trying to create a center with different looking houses. I know that I looks bland now but the landscaping still has some time to go.

Here are some photos from ground level. These were taken a few years ago.

Newer images:

 

[jetsetter]

More newer photos here:

http://www.newtownatstcharles.com/Architecture.aspx
http://www.newtownatstcharles.com/Details.aspx
http://www.newtownatstcharles.com/StreetScapes.aspx

 

[Donington]

I don't want to live in Seahaven!

 

[jetsetter]

The town of Seahaven featured in "The Truman Show" is actually called "Seaside" and it is located in Florida.

Seaside is an unincorporated master-planned community on the Florida panhandle roughly midway between Fort Walton Beach and Panama City. It was founded by builder/developer Robert Davis on land that he had inherited from his grandfather. The town plan was designed by architects/new urbanists Andr?s Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk. Seaside is located in Walton County.

The community is often cited as the first New Urbanist development. At the time of Seaside's construction, Walton County had no zoning ordinance, leaving Seaside's founders able to plan with a comparatively free hand. In the absence of these regulations (e.g., minimum lot size, separation of uses), Duany and Plater-Zyberk (DPZ) were able to design a mixed-use development with densities greater than conventional suburban development.

DPZ hired architects such as Melanie Taylor and Robert Orr to design the buildings and housing for the development. Seaside is primarily a resort community, consisting of residents who live there for months at a time as well as vacationers renting cottages and houses.

Seaside is often cited as an example of successful implementation of New Urbanism. Time magazine has called it "the most astounding design achievement of its era and, one might hope, the most influential" It has been used as a model for other New Urbanist developments in the United States and abroad. However, some have criticized Seaside as being overly rigid (the community's architectural standards provide strict limitations on the external aesthetics of the houses), resulting in conformity of style rather than creativity -- which some people call a manufactured fantasy. Others have criticized the community for its lack of socioeconomic diversity, which some see as particularly ironic given that the community was itself modeled on the diverse and urban neighborhoods of large North American cities such as New York City and San Francisco.

However, Seaside (and New Urbanism more generally) has had a significant impact on urban planning in many cities. New Urbanist developments continue to proliferate across North America, and many planners and urban designers are beginning to understand the importance of mixed-use and higher density communities (see Transit-oriented development).

The movie The Truman Show was filmed in Seaside. Director Peter Weir was planning on building a movie set town for the movie when his wife happened to see Seaside featured in an architect's magazine and thought it would be perfect for the film. The former Superintendent of Okaloosa Schools and now a member of the Florida Senate, State Senator Don Gaetz, was one of the original property owners of Seaside and his personal cottage was utilized as the Burbanks' house in the film.

Seaside includes works by Steven Holl, Machado & Silvetti, Deborah Berke, Walter Chatham, Dan Solomon, Alex Gorlin, Aldo Rossi, Sam Mockbee, David Mohney, and Jersey Devil.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seaside,_Florida

 

[chaos386]

Even after a few years, it still looks dead. They really could have used some curves here and there, too.

 

[lip]

Living in a theme park? No way. Much much to sterile and "utopia"-like for my taste. I just don't get it. So much flat land, but the houses are still built vertically instead of horizontally and still built like 200 years ago.

This is what hell looks like in my book. No thanks.
Greetings, lip

 

[Labcoatguy]

It's missing the one element that stops it looking like a sterilized piece of 50s Levittown, and that's trees that are older, or at least taller, than the residential buildings. Maybe it's just me, but having real trees around makes a neighborhood that much more livable.

 

[bartboy9891]

Lots of lakes, tons of land around, tiny yards. Most of the houses don't look all that spectacular either. I'll pass.

 

[jetsetter]

One of the points is to up the density.

 

[bartboy9891]

It looks like it was set up for some sort of experiment. I've lived in middle/upper-middle class suburbia for my entire life and I've never felt like I need a town center or a close knit community where you have no choice but to know everyone. And it's not like I dislike the traditional housing, my grandma lives in a large neighborhood that has nothing but traditional houses. And even though it has many retired people and is quiet, it looks 10x as vibrant and full of life as this urbanist community.

 

[Karoug]

So that is how hell looks like.

My thoughts exactly...

 

[zenkidori]

looks like one of those places that would sue you for having the wrong car in your driveway or a satellite dish.

I've seen planned communities like that, and the funny thing is, for how much talking they do about "community", you still don't usually know your stuck up neighbors.

 

[thedguy]

Wow... that was weird to see. My dad works in there all the time, hauling dirt and rock. Their advertisements around the are suggest the canals are to allow people to boat around rather than drive... like Venice.

It's also built in a flood plain. Guess whats gonna happen with the Mississippi (which it's less than 4 miles from) or Missouri flood again? Which they already had a scare fairly recently when the Missouri backed up during the beginning of summer.

I will give the place credit though, compared to all the other subdivisions in a 60 mile radius around St. Louis it looks 10 billion times better.

off-topic: How'd you find out about it?

 

[damnhawk]

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&time=&date=&ttype=&q=cape+coral+florida&ie=UTF8&ll=26.637639,-81.968651&spn=0.144848,0.32135&t=k&z=12&om=1

250 miles of canals......town is about 100 square miles.

 

[GTV V6]

Can you ski on any of that water ?

 

[jetsetter]

off-topic: How'd you find out about it?

I was looking through "New Urbanism" examples on Wikipedia.

 

[CraigB]

To me it looks to sterile, like a Hollywood movie set. I'll stick to my 80 year old farm house in a small town with big oak trees to shade the yard...