Seaside

Originally Published January 11, 2022

"Seaside has become kind of seedy and I kind of like that," said Andres Duany, one of the founders of the New Urbanism, along with his wife and partner, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk.  They designed Seaside as a prototype forty years ago.  When we arrived today it had hot dogs, crepes and grilled cheese sandwiches served from vintage Airstreams on the main plaza, so we felt at home. 

There have been innumerable towns built since on the model of Seaside, some designed by Andres and Lizz and their firm DPZ, and some designed by their protégés in the New Urbanism movement. The principles are empirical, traditional, and based on research. The fundamental notion is that streets are what make a town.  This might seem obvious at first, until you realize that the United States is largely rebuilt in the form of gated communities.

From a sustainability point of view one of the unique things about Seaside is its density, which is unusual given its location. Houses are close together with narrow streets, gravel aprons, alleyways and walkways winding through. This sort of thing is not normally permitted under most zoning codes, which dictate single family houses on minimum acreage lots. Such restrictions not only are environmentally destructive, contributing to endless suburban sprawl, but also add to the social stratification of America and the housing crisis in general.

At Seaside, as well as in subsequent towns based on this model, a new zoning was necessary to allow each house to exist in a mutually balanced arrangement with its surrounding neighbors. The design of each house is governed by a code that reinforces the definition of the street, similar to towns like Tupelo, Savannah or Oak Bluffs. Unlike an historic district code, it is not stylistic code. Rather, it is a dimensional code where the house and the street work together to create public spaces that contribute to the town as a whole as well as to each individual house. Lawns and asphalt are prohibited. Picket fences create a continuous Robert Frost civility.

It is interesting to note that the towns that have imitated Seaside fail to incorporate its fundamental principles. A development next door has borrowed many of its stylistic attributes in an attempt to emulate the "brand" yet was unable to shed the ubiquitous developer tropes of central parking lots, ambiguous pathways and dramatic architectural features with no real purpose.

The irony is that Seaside has considerably more dwelling units than the adjacent development, and these houses, originally built for a reasonable amount, are now worth a fortune, despite existing in a density comparable to public housing.

There have been many criticisms of Seaside and New Urbanism as a whole.  Are these real towns or just resort communities with second homes? How do these communities contribute to the problem of housing in America? All of these criticisms have some underlying truth to them, and in recent years Duany and Plater-Zyberk have focused their attention instead on the potential for new communities of mobile homes as a way of addressing the inequities in the market. Still, one has to ask, when looking at the gated communities sprawling across America, what is the alternative?

Seaside provides one answer.