Book Review: Building for People
Building for People: Designing Livable, Affordable, Low-Carbon Communities by Michael Eliason is a fascinating examination of the leading edge of new developments in Europe. The book looks at various aspects of the development process and considerations that go into building European eco-districts. Throughout the book, it compares and contrasts how development occurs in Europe with the United States and Canada (annoying referred to as “North America” throughout the book). The conclusions drawn from these comparisons is that “North America” should adopt European-style development patterns. However, these development patterns are based on such different fundamentals regarding the resources of cities and the way the development process occurs that it’s difficult to see how much of any of what’s discussed could be implemented in the United States and Canada, except for some specific building techniques.
The basic premise of Building for People is that our current patterns of development are unsustainable and exacerbate climate change and its impacts on our cities. Laying this foundation at the start of the book is brutal. The book has a forward penned by Alex Steffen, who has done more to shape my thinking about the climate crisis than any single other person. I use to read everything he wrote, and even backed multiple Kickstarters he ran to help support his work. However, in recent years, I’ve had to stop reading his work because I found it too depressing. Not that I think he is wrong, but because he presents mostly the doom and gloom of climate change instead of a more positive vision showing a future where everyone can living abundant lives while mitigating climate change. A future I believe is possible through how we build our cities.
However, from this foundation of doom, Building for People attempts to present strategies for building that verdant world we must work towards. Where Building for People falls flat is in providing a roadmap to transform the development processes today in the United States and Canada to become more like the development processes in Europe in the future. Many of the processes idealized in the book are so different from standard practices in the US and Canada that it is impossible to imagine how to change what we have here to be more like what they do in Europe.
The biggest difference that seems insurmountable, and is what enables European eco-districts, is that the city governments in Europe often own significantly more land than US cities. American cities simply do not have the same amount of control over the development process as European cities solely by the fact that they are not the landowner. However, for cities that do have large chunks of land, Building for People is a great guide to understanding how that land can best be utilized. I’m especially thinking of places like Anaheim, which owns Angel Stadium and the 151 acre parking lot around the stadium, or Tustin, which now owns the land which had been MCAS Tustin. (As is mentioned in the book, shuttered military bases are a great source of land for government-led eco-districts.)
Because of the premise that cities control the land, most of the book rests on the assumption that developments are built with priorities other than profit. If cities are the developer and landowner, this makes sense. Cities should be prioritizing community, affordability, and climate over profit. However, the dynamics and balance of priorities in America is much different than in Europe simply because private land owners drive so many of the decisions throughout the development process in the United States and Canada.
There are several chapters dedicated to defining the priorities of new developments and the early outreach cities do when bringing new projects forward for consideration. For instance, a city might dictate what the mix of affordability and unit sizes are for a project before it is designed, which is something they have the ability to do as the land owner. That’s simply not how the planning process works with private landowners. While it would certainly be good for developers in the United States to do more proactive outreach to figure out the needs of the community before they begin designing a project, the needs of the community will always take a backseat to the profits generated by the new development.
With that said, there are certainly valuable lessons city builders throughout North America can take from Building for People. There is a large focus in the book about the type of buildings that are allowed and required to be built. Specifically, Michael Eliason has been a driving force behind single stair reform and the permitting of point access blocks in the United States. The book delves into how point access blocks differ from typical multi-family construction in the United States and Canada, and the myriad of benefits they create for residents and communities. In many ways, the portions of the book focused on building design and construction are the most applicable to North American city building, as you might expect from a book written by an architect.
In the end, Building for People is an interesting look at European building practices, but that oversells what is possible in America. While the forward and introduction are very convincing regarding the need for better city building practices, and the book goes on to describe ideal practices elsewhere, it does not doo enough to explain how to get from where we are to where we need to go. The best chapters are on point access blocks and improving the energy efficiency for individual buildings. The sections on community and city planning are so divorced from what’s possible in America to be useless, although interesting. Building for People is worth reading for the parts about buildings, of if you’re interested in European urban planning processes.