There was standing room only at the Cambridge, New York Historical Society on Monday evening, November 10, 1997, as more than 100 people attended a presentation by noted author and lecturer James Howard Kunstler. Mr. Kunstler is the author of The Geography of Nowhere and Home From Nowhere. Both books are available for sale at Battenkill Books in Cambridge. Mr. Kunstler=s presentation in Cambridge was arranged by the Battenkill Conservancy-New York and was presented to the community as part of the Conservancy=s Speakers Series.

Mr. Kunstler was welcomed to Cambridge by Daniel Pollack of the Cambridge Historical Society and was introduced by BC-NY Chairman Ron Renoni. Mr. Kunstler spoke on preserving and rebuilding village character through appropriate architecture and design. In his introduction, Renoni said that Kunstler's visit was especially timely given the increase in strip commercial development on major roads in the Battenkill watershed such as along Route 29 leading into Greenwich and the proposal to demolish an old home in Cambridge's National Register Historic District to make way for an expanded drive-through Rite Aid store.

Inserting humor throughout his three and 2 hour slide presentation and lecture, Mr. Kunstler easily held the attention of the crowd as he associated the problems of current village design and building construction with many of the difficulties facing us as a society.

According to Kunstler, there is "tremendous confusion resulting from the mess we are making in everyday America as the character of out towns and villages change throughout the country-side. We have lost the ability to distinguish between what is urban and what is rural because everyone wants to live an urban lifestyle in a rural setting."

Many of the examples provided by Mr. Kunstler focused on Saratoga Springs, New York where he said that the disease of urban sprawl is exemplified. " No part of America is immune," according to Kunstler. "Small hamlets are fading into history and it is happening throughout Washington County. But there is still hope for the region: the towns have not yet been utterly destroyed or obliterated and the region still has remnants of what its culture is all about."

Throughout his extensive travels, Mr. Kunstler has found that there are few remaining special places and many of these have town squares or village greens. In the last few generations, "we've thrown away the skill of 'place-making' which begins with the fundamental requirement of space defining: to get a sense of place you must first define the physical area of a town that is to be considered the public realm."

Mr. Kunstler led the group through several fundamental principles of design. The first principle is that the public realm is that area within the town that belongs to everybody and this begins with the street. A well-designed street includes the buildings that surround it. The buildings adjacent to the street come out to the sidewalk and are more than one story high but no taller than 5 stories high forming a "street wall". They are 16 to 20 feet deep from edge of sidewalk and do not occupy the entire block. Commerce takes place out in front of these buildings and on the first floor contain a rich mix of activity. The upper stories provide opportunities for primary residences.

Second, the buildings include porches or verandas which serve as mediating devices between the public domain of the street and the semi-private chamber of the building interior. The veranda is a transitional zone that projects the message that this is a place worth caring deeply about.

Third, the 'pedestrian path' includes the area of the street through which people move including the sidewalk, a planting strip, the trees that line the street and the veranda. The street trees, planted at regular intervals, should be appropriate species with similar shapes and sizes. They have an architectural purpose: to filter sunlight onto the street and to form a corridor with a wonderful green leafy canopy. People enjoy sitting in a place that's sheltered and protected from the elements with services that are nearby. This area is 'permeable': it allows people to pass in and out from the public area of the street to the building interior.

Using a series of slides of old town photographs and artists' renderings to illustrate these concepts, Mr. Kunstler provided examples of how old buildings in older towns adhered to these principles. "This type of design accommodates a variety of styles which must be consistent with our psychological needs as human beings. It allows for extensive variety so that no one gets bored."

Slides depicting more recent construction along boulevards and multi-lane avenues of several cities provided stark contrast to the scenes depicted in the older towns. "The post-World War II buildings represent civic failures: they are typically flat-roofed, one-story buildings that no longer form a street wall and they project a message that there is no reason to be attached to them since they are meant to be thrown away. These are buildings that no one will ever regard with affection. They degrade us as individuals and as a community."

"The result," Kunstler said," is that we have lost complete faith in our ability to create a well-designed town: we have given up and so we cling to anything that is old in an effort to preserve it. When you build buildings you don't enjoy looking at, it eventually leads to towns you don't care about and ultimately to nations not worth defending."

"But there is hope if you raise your standards and demand better buildings. This means you must develop better codes and use civic design."

"This cannot be accomplished through zoning," said Kunstler. "Traditional zoning segregates whereas civic design integrates. Zoning is concerned with abstractions; civic design is concerned with quality and the details. Zoning is not concerned with spiritual needs and beauty while civic design is concerned about spirituality. Suburban sprawl is the result of zoning."

According to Kunstler, the way we tax property must also be revised. The existing taxation approach punishes people who put up good buildings and rewards those who build poorly designed buildings. The remedy is locational taxation where property is taxed based on the value of the location rather than on the type of building.

Mr. Kunstler described New Urbanism as an effort that focuses on these principles. The initiative is composed of architects, activists, and politicians who are trying to restore civic design in America.

Kunstler presented slides of several new towns throughout the United States as examples of the beauty that results from the application of these principles. Seaside in Florida; Harbor Town in Memphis, Tennessee; Fairview Village in Portland, Oregon; and the Cotton District in Starkville, Mississippi were just a few of the examples provided to illustrate that by demanding higher design standards, the value of towns increases dramatically because of their appeal to the spiritual and psychological needs of the society.

This approach does not require rich benefactors or visionary developers. It may be put into place by the residents of the town demanding a high standard for the design of its new construction and renovation of its existing structures. In closing, Mr. Kunstler wished the community well in its endeavor to work with Rite Aid on its proposed expansion .