JANUARY 2009 » book review

Teaming Green

Design Charrettes for Sustainable Communities
by Patrick M. Condon
Island Press, Washington, DC; 2008
192 pages; paperback; 50 b&w illustrations; $50
ISBN 978-1-59726-053-4

Reviewed by Michael Carey

Patrick Condon's Design Charrettes for Sustainable Communities takes the form, quite deliberately, of a self-help book. This is not intended for urban planners with low self esteem – a deservedly common breed, I suspect – but for cities themselves. The pathological condition Condon describes is the post-1950 decline of urban and suburban environments into a state of un-sustainability and the treatment the book proposes centers around the design charrette.

Condon, a professor at the University of British Columbia's School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture and a senior researcher at that university's Design Center for Sustainable Communities, defines "charrette" simply: "a time-limited, multiparty design event organized to generate a collaboratively produced plan for a sustainable community." While this sounds relatively straightforward, there is a radical aspect to the charrette, namely the shift away from the single designer with the single solution and toward collaborative and interdisciplinary design activity.

In the book's first chapter, Condon turns to an unusual source – E.F. Schumacher's writing on convergent and divergent problems – to flesh out this shift and its importance. Schumacher describes convergent problems as those where attempts at solutions converge on one single answer. He uses as an example the development of the bicycle. The "problem" was the need for an efficient, human-powered vehicle and the solution was and is the design of the bicycle. While refinements have been made to the basic design and new materials have been incorporated into the manufacturing process, the fundamental answer to the problem has remained quite constant. Divergent problems, on the other hand, are ones that do not converge on a single solution. Schumacher's example of this type is the problem of education, which he frames in terms of the poles of discipline and freedom. The merits of these approaches have been discussed for millennia, yet there has been no convergence on either as the solution. Schumacher argues that this divergent problem may be transcended rather than solved. This involves what he terms a "higher order": that of love, care and compassion. You may have love and discipline or love and freedom, but you must always have love, he argues.

While this thinking seems far removed from urban growth boundaries and traffic patterns, it is at the core of Condon's argument for the effectiveness of the charrette process. Sustainability at the level of community is a divergent problem, he argues, and the charrette is the means by which "contradictions can be resolved not by proofs, but by empathy, intuition, understanding, and compassion." The design produced by the charrette will embody these qualities. Some may balk at this language, but they must surely appreciate the author's understanding of the practice of urban design as more than the simple solution for technical problems. Professional designers and planners must also appreciate the powerful argument for the breakdown of boundaries between designer, client and builder.

The heart of Condon's book is the central set of chapters that deal with how a successful charrette is to be planned and executed. He first distinguishes between a visioning charrette (speculative planning) and an implementation charrette (producing implementable plans), then goes on to discuss the design brief for each of these types. Condon's practical experience is then distilled into "nine rules for a good charrette." These are: design with everyone; start with a blank sheet; build from the policy base; provide just enough information; talk, doodle, draw; charrettes are jazz, not classical; lead without leading; move in, move out, move across; and the drawing is a contract. Descriptions of, and advice on, setting up and carrying out workshops and then the charrette itself are given in later chapters. These are followed by a chapter on the post-charrette phase.

Two case studies end the book, one of each type. The first is an implementation charrette for a greenfield project in British Columbia. The second is a visioning charrette for a very large area outside Portland, OR. Each presented unforeseen challenges and had unexpected outcomes and one central lesson seemed to come from both case studies: this kind of multi-party design activity is messy and political. Condon's advice for facilitators is to embrace rather than fight against the diversity of ideas that can come up in workshops and charrettes.

Perhaps the most compelling argument of all in Condon's book is somewhat hidden and appears in its preface. Here the author gives a compelling description of the decline into unsustainable incoherence of post-1950s planning. In comparing earlier planning with this later period, Condon remarks on the coherence and sustainability of traditional urban patterns. In tradition, he implies, lies the key to true sustainability. This is not a nostalgia for the return to a simpler way of life, but part of a larger case for working at the smallest scales to overcome global challenges – at the level of individual sites and neighborhoods – and to synthesize these elements into a functional and sustainable whole at the level of the city. For this, the lessons of the past and the established patterns of urban life can be our guides.  

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