Reviews
Note: The book was released in late 2007 in a test mode. There was no launch and no publicity, other than a single review requested by the New Zealand editor of www.worldchanging.com. That attracted attention, and author Claude Lewenz found himself asked to speak at conferences, write commentaries and over 700 copies of the book were sold before the support framework of the Village Forum was ready to be launched. The test proved successful, the message relevant and on target. Here are some of the early reviews found on the Internet:
- Nourish Magazine Review (Australia)
- A review by an Australian Blogger with a post script from a Christian perspective
- A review by a reader on Amazon
About the Book
How to Build a Village enables people to "get it". It's easy to read. Richly illustrated with colour photographs, it paints a picture of a better way of life. It focuses on opportunity, what is possible, what is practical... if we begin with different intent.
The intent focuses on quality of life, a concept that means different things to different people. Thousands of years ago, Aristotle wrote that people do not form communities for justice, peace, defence or traffic, but for the sake of the good life. Yet in the 20th century, with the concept of traffic elevated to a monstrous system we find that the good life took a back seat to cars.
The book reclaims peoples right to the good life. Aristotle went on to write that there were four parts to the good life... conviviality, artistic & intellectual growth, religion and politics. The book proposes an architectural design that enables the people who will live there to set our their vision of what those mean. By proposing multiple plazas, it suggests these social desires will mean different things to different people, and the plaza structure encourages those differences. One size does not fit all.
The book is designed as an easy read. The first chapter does not begin until page 47, after 14 sections entitled "If you are..." such as "a Baby Boomer" or "a nearby Farmer". This is because the Village has different audiences, and it is helpful to find out first how it appeals to you.
The book was field-tested for 18 months prior to its launch. In one case, a proposed village was getting no traction with a local government for over a year. When the book came out, the local advocate for that village bought 20 copies and gave them to the decision-makers and key-influencers for Christmas. A week later, they came back with thumbs up. They understood the idea, they liked the idea, they would push for it.
How to Build a Village is a 256 page handbook with over 400 colour photographs in three parts:- The first part "If you are…" identifies 14 different audiences for the book. Find yourself and read.
- The second part paints the big picture, the vision and the details of Villages. Share the vision.
- The third part is a how-to manual covering the major aspects of actually creating your Village. Do it.
So what's the book about?
People have to live somewhere, and where we live shapes the quality of our lives. If all the world's a stage, as the Bard tells us, then the world's set designer are the real estate developers. In the 20th century the stage we built left something to be desired. If we may quote from architect Christopher Alexander:
In the 20th century we have passed through a unique period, one in which architecture as a discipline has been in a state that is almost unimaginably bad. Sometimes I think of it as a mass psychosis of unprecedented dimension, in which the people of earth – in large numbers and in almost all contemporary societies – have created a form of architecture which is against life, insane, image-ridden, hollow. The ugliness which has been created in the cities of the world, and the banality and pretentiousness of many 20th century buildings, streets, and parking lots have overwhelmed the earth. Much of this construction is caused by developers, housing authorities...
How to Build a Village is on one level about real estate development, or rather how to develop real estate to produce a wonderful place to live while treading lightly on earth. It's probably like no other book written on the subject, because the author, Claude Lewenz chose to approach the fundamental questions as if no one had ever asked them before. In this way, he avoided containment of conventional thinking - the tunnel-vision view of what is real and what is important. The result is a highly readable, entertaining yet compelling handbook on how to get out of the mess we seem to have created through tunnel-vision decision-making and action.
The idea of building a habitat to not only be a wonderful place to live, but also solve all sorts of social, economic and environmental challenges facing modern society took the author, Claude Lewenz about 20 years of research, dialogue, focus groups and real-life testing to refine. Then, shortly before the book was published, some of the issues it addressed, such as global warming and affordable housing, became political hot topics. Remarkable timing. However, if one looks at the conventional proposals people and organisations are making to solve greenhouse gas emissions, they focus on solutions like making cars more efficient, or shifting to biofuel to reduce the adverse effects of a car-based society. For long-distance transport this makes sense. But within local habitat we have better choices; ones that How to Build a Village puts forward.
What happens if instead we build human habitat where we don't need to drive? We don't reduce or offset pollution, we burn no fuel – zero emissions. Design the development so it removes the need for cars as local transport. It not only meets governmental objectives, it makes it a better place to live.
In the 1990's the new urbanism movement began to advocate more human scaled habits. Among other things, it sought to domesticate the car. The author visited some of those projects over time, and observed that eventually the car clawed its way back to dominance. He concluded the car cannot be domesticated, it must be locked out. Two major changes in global conditions make this possible. First, cheap oil is history. The pecuniary interest of the oil industry has changed, so they get more per barrel. They will run out if we keep burning at today's rate so it is now in their interest to support initiatives which reduce the burn rate. Second the advances in telecommunications are ending the meaning of distance in our global economy. When an engineer in Seattle can run a robotic machine in Thailand over the internet, and people can hold a meeting by video conferencing, the need for transport lessens. Even more important it changes fundamental economic conditions, so people can live where quality of life is high – the commute electronically and instantly.
How to Build a Village goes three steps further in advancing principles of urban (meaning high density, not necessarily city) design:
- The paramount requirement that we create a thriving local economy that sells 20% local to global and buys 80% local to local. This becomes possible thanks to advances in telecommunications, especially high-speed broadband. This makes it possible for its residents to walk to work. Without a strong, durable, local economy, it's not a Village.
- Place everything people need... work, shopping, schooling, cafés, recreation and a wide range of housing, all within a 10-minute walk surrounded by a greenbelt. Ban the cars. Not needed. Build a motorpool outside the village walls for longer distance transport with spaces for private ownership and Village rental cars. Banning cars within allows a completely different, human-scaled design. Old people need not move to retirement homes when they lose their driver license. Children play in the streets safely. People connect on plazas, no appointment needed; quality of life goes up. Streets are narrower, cost less to build and maintain. Residents need not spend so much buying and maintaining cars. They don't need to pay for a two car garage or a driveway. When one forgoes having to design for 3,000 cars for every 5,000 persons, the development costs less to build, needs less land, yet is more charming.
- Build to achieve a critical mass, 5,000 to 10,000 persons, and create parallel housing markets to provide permanent, non-bureaucratic affordable housing for key sectors of the community... youth, elders, teachers, public servants, artists and so on.
The book offers hundreds of other design patterns that fit together in the Village concept. Yet, in providing them, the book does not dictate a master plan – no cookie cutter design. Instead, it provides a process in which the people who will live there, the professionals with expertise, the approving governmental authorities, and the attributes of the land work together to produce an authentic design reflecting the distinct character of the people and place. This assures each Village is distinctive, reflecting the authentic character of its people, and that it remain interesting and fulfilling for a lifetime.
